TABLE FOR ONE : Why men prefer football
Posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Irecently posed the following question to a group of local middle-age men "Do you prefer watching football or having sex ? "The men pondered the question for a second before a voice said "Who's playing ?"
You probably recall the national survey that revealed most men prefer watching football to having sex.
Why ?
Most men would never prefer watching baseball, basketball or golf over sex. But football fills some deep and perhaps slightly ominous need buried deep in the male gene pool. Football meets needs in men that no other form of entertainment or activities can provide. The male war-kill gene is as active today as it was 10, 000 years ago when we roamed the vast plains with a spear killing anything or anyone who threatened. Today, killing other males is frowned upon by most societies except in the legal killing of war.
But there are not enough wars to go around, so football was invented. Today, our subconscious war-kill need is met in the game of football.
Somewhere deep inside us we transfer our soul into the body of the players on the field. We become Mitch Mustain or Peyton Manning or Matt Jones. We experience their success (or failure ) vicariously at a visceral level - almost as much as the actual player. We sit for hours upon a bar stool, as you really can't watch football alone, drink buckets of beer and stare for hours at the gladiators on the screen. They are us. We pick our favorite player, who may or may not be similar in physical build as our own, and he becomes our secret idol. We worship at his cleated feet. We become that player. We relive our childhood and once again become the 8-yearold boys we long to be.
A part of this transference of soul is allegiance. We align ourselves with a team and we root for that team throughout our entire lives. Our total devotion may be irrational. For example, I love the Cowboys because I once met Tom Landry's cousin's insurance man. I love the Chargers because I touched Lance Alworth in 1960 and Alworth wore the famous lightning bolt on his helmet. I'm a devoted Razorback and a Greenwood Bulldog for life.
We'd like to think we have evolved to a higher level of sophistication. You know it's not true. We're still animals. Men need war and killing like women need babies to suckle at their breasts. It's nature's way. Look around the world. What do you see ? It can be argued that we are killing and warring today more effectively than ever before.
But many of us have grown too old to war or participate in barroom brawls, both of which are considered acts of patriotism. We have to find something to satisfy our warkilling gene. Football was invented for this purpose. It is our replacement of choice.
The rules of football obviously parallel the rules of war: One side attacks the enemy territory by land and air, and the other side defends its own territory; it's played on a gridiron; strategy is involved in the attacks and the defenses; and generals call the plays (tactics ) and with the use of bombs, blitzes, zones and man-to-man coverage send the younger men to carry out the plan and destroy the enemy.
Another subset of the war-kill gene is competition. Men need to compete. We compete every day in a million different ways. We compete with our women, our children, our cars, our tires, our bankrolls. Who can drink the most, eat the biggest steak, buy the biggest house we can possibly purchase. Everything is competition. When playing golf, men don't care about chipping and putting. That's sissy stuff. Men want to drive for distance and brag about who is the longest. We men want the biggest, longest, stiffest driver on the market. It doesn't take Freud to figure that one out.
Football is honest physical competition. We want our boys to play football in order to become real men. Whoever is the fastest, strongest, meanest, hard hittin'est and who wants it the most will win the contest. We love it.
Which brings us back to the aforementioned survey.
Let's be honest. Most men would prefer watching football, and perhaps between onslaughts, attacks, hard hits, long bombs, blitzes, broken bones and blown out knees, ponder the possibility of sex. That's why the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders were invented.
Grady Jim Robinson lives in Fayetteville. His column appears on Wednesdays.
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