My Fall Lover

As Fall fast approaches, there are many things to excited over, but none so important as the start of football season. My father didn’t have sons, so he had to compromise. He took his two daughters and instilled in them a love of things manly – cigars, good scotch, driving aggressively and most important, sports. And while I do appreciate a good baseball game, my life is too hectic to follow all 180 games, excluding the post-season (like the Mets will see that in a long, long time). Even hockey is hard to follow, since often the games aren’t televised in a readily accessible way or even aired live. (Which is another story, one I will let my good friend Hockey Joe rant on.) It was always football. Always.

We grew up praying to God on Sunday for a Giant victory. While my mother fixed us snacks, we would all sit around the television in various degrees of sweats and yoga wear watching the game. Football was our Sunday. Football, and eating copious amounts of cheese and crackers and potato chips. And while some of my father’s lessons – like how to effectively meet men – didn’t take, a love of sports did. As I grew older, I learned I lived and died by the Giants and football season.Sunday, or more specifically football sunday, became a means of relaxation.

When a college student, I had a philosophy professor who would remind you of a much handsomer and suave Giles from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. He was cerebral and I never would have thought him a sports fan at all. And yet, one day some of the guys and I were talking about the big game, and he joined right in. Apparently for him, watching ESPN or a football game was a means of kicking back and letting loose. It was how he took a break from stress.

While my first real boyfriend was a complete and total douche, I still have fond memories of the two of us curled up in bed together watching a game. The Blizzard Bowl between the Steelers and the Jets from a few years back remains, oddly enough, my favorite memory of him. Snowed in, we decided to curl up in bed all day with a pizza and a bottle of wine. We watched Jerome Bettis and Curtis Martin slip and slide up and down the stadium. I’m not ashamed to say that football, or rather watching a game, is a big turn on for me.

I love football; my father introduces me to his friends as the woman who knows more about the game than anyone he knows. It’s not uncommon for me to have better insight on the game than my dad’s friends. It’s gained me a strange entrance to the world of the middle-aged man. While the women gossip and snack, I sit with the men, leaned forward with my beer, hanging on the next play.

Of course this is sometimes a gigantic turn off for me, especially when I correct them. (Which I admit  I need to stop doing so adamantly.) Still, it’s football for me. Sadly enough I don’t have nearly enough friends who love the game. So that needs to change. And quickly, opening day is 9/12/10!