Soggy Nachos

Men define their manhood through football.
I watched a lot of football yesterday, including THE PATS horrible loss to the Cardinals, whom I have eternally cursed.
I dig football for explosive violence. I dig football for exquisite grace. I dig football for intensity.
I dig football because it is so goddamn manly.
Football players today are monsters bred in laboratories. Specific exercise routines and schedules, specific diets, fancy ass supplements and energy boosters and replenishers.
Pre-game rituals designed to pump them up to roar out to do battle in the coliseum.
In any other sport, if the players huddled around just before the game and repeated mindless chants, rising in crescendo until reaching an explosive peak, I would laugh. It would be out of place.
Especially in golf.
But it makes sense in football and I accept it and dig it.
There is a lot of fear and aggression to the sport, and you have to find a way to kill your nerves and build your confidence and flood flow the adrenaline.
But there is more to it than that. Male fans secretly want to be like these guys. Tough, apparently fearless, hugely muscled, openly insane and intimidating.
Very few men have jobs that make them look macho. Most have jobs that make them look like a soggy nacho.
So we over compensate by pretending our jobs are macho, by strutting and telling everybody how hard we work, how much pressure we are under.
And we watch football. And talk about it.
Guys talking about football is a funny thing. They puff out their chests and get all opinionated and hard assed. Just talking about it channels the tough guy vibe.
Football fans are fanatics. Arguments are hard edged. Logic is non-existent because everybody is an expert and everybody is right.
This entire thought process was inspired by watching the fans in the stands yesterday. Screaming, fist pumping, shaking and jumping up and down. Which is exactly what I would have been doing at Gillette Stadium yesterday.
Most of these guys do not look tough. Most of them have huge beer bellies which they do not mind exposing to the world on national TV. Rules of attractiveness are reversed in football stadiums. In every day life, we suck in our bellies in a vain attempt to gain the attention of that girl who is twenty five years younger than us. In the stadium we throw that belly out there and expect women to swoon.
Most of these guys will go to work Monday morning, if they are not too hung over. They will go to work even though they don't want to because they have no choice, no control. And they will do what their boss tells them to do.
But on Sunday they rule the world in insanity and fierceness and intensity and there ain't nobody gonna mess with them or tell them what to do.
We are men. We need this.
The whole deal was made more ironic because allergies are laying me low this year. Killing me. Sucking all energy directly out of my body and leaving me loose limbed and glassy eyed.
All this intensity was swirling around me as I sat in my recliner completely wiped out. I fell asleep for a second, a couple of times. You know, the head nod.
Do you realize how tired I have to be to nod off during a PATS game?
AND I had a cat in my lap. They took turns.
My presence in that chair was the exact opposite of what football is all about.
But I still felt macho inside.
And I feel tough writing about it today.
I might only be five foot seven inches tall, but baby I am going to take on the world today.
Got football on the brain.