Over the course of this week, you will be bombarded by features in women’s magazines and on daytime talk shows on the theme of “Impress Your Man With Your Super Bowl Knowledge!” I saw one just the other day featuring a bottle-blonde–is “bimbo” too strong a word for the internet?–tossing a football in her hands as she spoke to some guy without a neck who used to play for the Canton Bulldogs. The palaver went something like this:
Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch
BIMBO: We’re here with Chuck Brandnewjetski, former special teams coach of the Duluth Eskimos. How are you today Chuck?
NO-NECK: I can’t feel my legs.
BIMBO: Chuck, how does an insecure woman impress her “significant other” on Super Bowl Sunday?
NO-NECK: Her significant other what?
Irina Slutskaya: Her trademark “coquette” finish.
The question never asked is–why? Why do you have to impress your boyfriend/husband/date while watching the Super Bowl? Does he read articles in men’s magazines during the Winter Olympics to bone up on the difference between a salchow and a toe-loop? Does he know Irina Slutskaya from Johnny Weir? I didn’t think so.
I know it’s a man’s world–James Brown said so–but that’s no reason for an intelligent woman to kowtow to the gods of male supremacy by pretending to be interested in something she’s not. Do you think all-purpose cultural critic/intellectual Susan Sontag used to discuss a punter’s “hang time” while dipping a Cool Ranch Dorito into the salsa at the Partisan Review’s Super Bowl Party? I don’t think so.
Sontag: “Watch the Super Bowl? I’d rather be dead in a ditch.”
Still, you don’t want to get a reputation for being aloof or stand-offish by not joining in the fun at a Super Bowl party. What you need is verbal “gamesmanship,” a conversational technique perfected by humorist Stephen Potter as a means of countering, and perhaps even fending off, the sort of gilt-edged bores that communal football-watching attracts like Drosophila melanogaster (the common fruit fly) to a bunch of bananas.
Fruit fly. You can tell it’s a male by the little foam “We’re #1″ on right wing.
When confronted by the sort of self-absorbed monomaniac who assumes you’re interested in his worldly travels and drones on about the beauties of Upper Volta until your eyes glaze over, Potter suggested using the bore’s momentum against him, as with jiu-jitsu. “Upper Volta, quite right, beautiful country,” you interject thoughtfully. “But only in the south.” After a few of these counterpunches, your interlocutor wanders off muttering to himself, questioning the very foundations of his self-esteem.
With Super Bowl gamesmanship, the important thing is not what just happened on the field or the plasma TV screen, it’s what didn’t happen. If the Seahawks Jaxon Smith-Njibga catches a pass and is immediately tackled, some knucklehead former high school linebacker may say “Oh, man–they read that one right!” (Note that each word is only one syllable, for ease of pronunciation.) Now’s your chance to jump in with “Would have been a perfect situation for a halfback option pass–remember Prentice Gautt?”
“Who the hell’s Prentice Gautt?”
As with a wide receiver, it is essential that you run your route precisely after making this out-of-the-blue comment. Establish eye contact with the knucklehead, smile, then cut right to les cruditees arrayed around the dip. Believe me, he doesn’t know who Prentice Gautt is, and he won’t follow you to a plate of vegetables.
Les cruditees: A football-free seam in the defense.
There are several “story lines” to this year’s Super Bowl that will be rehashed ad nauseam until the last second ticks off the clock. To give but two examples, Peyton and Eli Manning are in a two-heads-to-one battle to maintain their supremacy over former New England-Tampa star Tom Brady in most commercial minutes by a former NFL quarterback. Expect protests from Mothers Against Manning Commercials, a non-profit advocacy group whose research reveals that the average American child will watch 246 hours of Manning brothers commercials before leaving the maternity ward.
On the defensive side of the game, there’s Seahawks loudmouth defensive back Devon Witherspoon, who constantly violates the mellow, laid-back code of the Northwest by opening up cans of verbal whup-ass on opposing wide receivers. If he shuts down Kayshon Boutte and unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse, expect Patriots fans to respond with characteristic dry New England wit, preserving their anonymity by wearing grocery bags over their heads.
When some nimmy-not brings this up on the daft assumption that you were not aware of it, freeze him in his tracks by saying “It’s too bad they chose paper over plastic.”
Whenever I have a question about football, which I rarely do, I ask my oldest daughter, the Bears fan. But nobody every called my family normal.
My sister-in-law is the resident expert on pro football in our family now, even though (and I checked) SHE NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE DOWN IN HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE!