SKIPPING THE SUPER BOWL

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. It’s the day after and I have no regrets. Didn’t see the commercials. Missed Bad Bunny. Definitely didn’t check out Kid Rock.

 

I skipped it all and I feel amazing. Or, I feel my normal self, at least. 

 

I haven’t watched the Super Bowl since at least 1986. That’s right. Four decades. It’s not much of a statement to skip the Super Bowl when I live in Vancouver, Canada. Stating the obvious, the Super Bowl is very American. As described in yesterday’s New York Times, it’s “that most red-white-and-blue of cultural moments.” Canadians aren’t so big on American moments right now. Canadians have their own football league, not that I care much about that either.

 

So, yeah, watching football is only slightly more interesting to me than golf. Okay, no, it’s considerably better than watching golf. But isn’t everything?

 

Back in the ’80s, I lived in Texas. At the time, it was treasonous not to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys. (I taught only minutes away from the stadium.) Mostly, I skipped watching their games, too. In fact, I timed Sunday grocery shopping for when the Cowboys were on TV. It meant the aisles were clear and there was no line at the checkout. Well played, I’d tell myself. Well played.

 

I realize I sound like a gay cliché, not watching football. But my relationship with the sport is more complicated than that. I will watch bits of college football games. I like the fast play, the marching bands, the cheering traditions, the students in the stands wearing their school colours. During my first three years attending TCU—“Go Frogs!”—in Fort Worth, Texas, I attended thirty-two out of thirty-three games, home and away. I travelled to Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee as well as all over Texas. I’ve gone to several bowl games featuring my team. I even paid $1,000 for a ticket to the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2011. Including the parade, it was worth it as a lifetime memory. (We won!) And, yes, I do expect to go to another TCU game someday…just not for a thousand bucks.

 

So watching some kind of football is considerably better than watching golf.

 

If I were going to watch a Super Bowl, yesterday’s might have been the one. Go, Seahawks. I like the city of Seattle a lot. I know I could live there if an opportunity or need arose. I’m happy for the city that its team finally won its first Super Bowl. I’m happy they get to have a parade. (That’s what happens, isn’t it? Isn’t that what they’re vying for…which city gets to calendar an extra parade? I did say I like marching bands. (Parades without roses, not so much.))

 

Pre-1987, I went to several Super Bowl parties. There were always two groups in attendance: (1) the sit-on-the-edge-of-the-sofa dudes who screamed at the television screen and high-fived each other as if they’d actually been on the field and helped make that touchdown happen, and (2) the rest of us who sat around, the screen barely in view, chatting about work, (non) dating, the latest movies and wondering if Brad would go berserk if any of us said his facepainting was “nice makeup.” Occasionally, the two groups would connect at the food table, stocking up on Doritos with bean dip and a surprisingly awesome cheese dip made from Velveeta and a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes. For the most part though, it was two separate parties in one household. 

 

I decided to stop watching NFL football in the fall of 1987. That’s when the players went on strike. Yes, they wanted more pay. Greed, I told myself. While $3.2 million is currently the average salary, in 1987, players earned an average of somewhere between $212,000 and $230,000…still A LOT of money back in the good old days before we knew anything about CTE. 

 

I was offended that obscenely paid football players wanted more. (Yes, I’m sure the team owners were making even more obscene amounts but the divide between the 1% and everyone else has always been outrageous.) All I knew was that I was working my butt off in a noble profession as a special education teacher and, with my own pay raise, I was making $14,000 per year….not a lot of money back then. These striking football players were making FIFTEEN TIMES more money than me. Something told me that this was f#@ked up. I turned my back on the NFL and have never regretted it. 

 

I don’t even watch the halftime shows. Sorry, Madonna. (See, I’m not a total gay cliché.)

 

I’ve never had a fear of missing out. If there’s a wardrobe malfunction, I’ll read about it the next day. If there’s an epic commercial—come on folks, watching commercials shouldn’t be a highlight—I can try to catch it on YouTube although it may not play in my region since I don’t live in the United States.

 

And speaking of the U.S., I’m more than tired about how everything gets politicized there, so much so that there were competing halftime shows. Good god, let Bad Bunny say or do something about immigration and, if you don’t like it, go double dip your Dorito in that Velveeta dip. Choosing to not watch something is easy, folks. I’ve been not watching for four decades.

 

I like having my Sunday afternoons free. (It gives me more time to read Sunday’s New York Times.) I like having Monday nights clear as well as whenever the NFL schedules other televised games…Thursdays? Saturdays? Really, I don’t care enough to look it up. 

 

So another Super Bowl come and gone. Hoopla over. Except for that parade. Time to move on to more important things like whether I should watch Hamnet before the Oscars. I’m not feeling it, but I’m sure it too is better than golf…and that Melania flick. 

MOCK JOCK

My boyfriend, Evan, thinks I’m a jock. He tells me he got this impression when he first came across my photos on my OkCupid profile a year before I reached out and sent him a message. He figured I was a dumb sports dude and passed me over. 

 

There’s a whole lot wrong with that. Just being into sports doesn’t signify a diminished IQ. I’m supposed to say that. I’m supposed to disregard any impressions I get from inebriated guys watching games at the bar of a pizzeria I frequent. It’s the booze, not the basketball. They’d be just as avid fans if they drank straight tomato juice during the game, right? (As an aside, who put clam juice in a V8 and decided it was a thing?) 

 

The bigger issue is that Evan passed on me because I came off as a jock. Surely there were many reasons for guys on dating sites to dismiss me but me being some hardcore sports dude? How had I even conveyed that? I recall a photo of me cycling and one of me hiking and another of me at the beach, fully clothed, just smiling because it’s, you know, the beach. That’s my happy place. I wasn’t playing beach volleyball or jogging along the shore (which I do, often, when I travel). I wasn’t even hauling one of those metal detectors, which I presume to be heavy enough for a mild upper body workout, searching for gold or nickels or someone’s lost keys. 

 

In no way should the photo of me in the sand have given off a jock vibe. I think I was wearing a hoodie in the shot which, to Evan, is jock clothing. (Walk through Safeway and check out all the guys wearing hoodies while loading up on Doritos and pork rinds. That oughta destroy any jock connotation.) 

 

I suppose I wanted the biking and hiking pics to convey that I’m an active person, at least when not lounging in hoodies. Jock though? Me?!

 

The weird thing is that Evan still thinks I’m a jock. This after ten months of dating. It’s baffling.

 

I can say with 100% certainty that not a single person in elementary school, junior high or high school ever mistook me for a jock. Just the opposite. I went through physical education at a time when lame teachers assigned to people to be captains who then took turns picking classmates to make teams. I was always the last boy standing against the wall. If it was a good day, I’d get picked before Mary Novakovic. But then a lot of days weren’t good at all. Not in P.E. I can’t count all the times Stephen P. loud-whispered, “We lost because of you!” He said what the rest of the team was thinking.

 

Jock.

 

Um, it just sounds weird. Like calling me a Martian or a Muppet or a Fanilow. (Okay, I did own several Barry Manilow albums and I did see him in concert and I never change the radio station when “Mandy” comes on even if “Looks Like We Made It” is a better song though not as epic as “Weekend in New England.”) Maybe Fanilow fits, but I’m neither a Martian, nor a Muppet (even though I adore the Swedish Chef), nor a jock.

 

Evan begs to differ. The latest piece of evidence he’s holding over me is the fact that I just went to a college football bowl game, shelling out more than $1,200 Canadian to see my alma mater, TCU, beat Michigan at the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona. (This, incidentally, is the fifth time I’ve gone to a bowl game to watch TCU play.) I might have also gone to Los Angeles to see TCU play Georgia in the national championship today, but my bank account won’t cooperate. Honestly, I thought getting to the Fiesta Bowl was as good as it would get. Never thought we’d win. Isn’t that proof that I’m not a dumb jock? I’m realistic. I don’t go around boasting about My Team. I don’t wear jerseys to pretend I’m What’s His Name. (Really, I only knew the quarterback, Heisman Trophy runner-up, Matt Duggan, whom I called Max for the entire first half and whose last name I only realized I’d mispronounced when I saw the highlights on TV after the game.) 

 

Not a jock.

 

I think I watched the last ten minutes of one TCU football game in the regular season. Instead, I just checked out the scores online and watched the team move up the rankings in the weekly polls. It wasn’t much different than following the Billboard music charts which I’ve done ever since I was a kid listening to American Top 40 while my peers were outside playing baseball or throwing the football around or skateboarding in the neighborhood. (One scabbed knee from a tumble on the driveway was enough for me to let Tony Hawk have all the glory. For the record, I had to Google him, thinking he might be a surfer or racecar driver instead of a skateboarder.)  

 

I should add that I went to the football game with my two besties, both women, from my days at TCU. They are my bowl buddies. I should also say I didn’t drink beer at the game. I’m realizing now that I didn’t drink anything at all. Apparently, I think stadium refreshments are overpriced, but I’m a sucker for premium football tickets with hefty service fees. 

 

I think that makes me more of a dork than a jock, but I’m not going to enlighten Evan. If my boyfriend still thinks I’m a jock, I’m weirdly flattered. Hopefully, he’s cast aside the “dumb” descriptor. I don’t dare ask.

 

And one more thing:

 

Go Frogs!