The Football Fan’s Manifesto
Michael Tunison
To my mother, with all my love,
even if she is a Redskins fan
Contents
Acknowledgments
Article I: The Supremacy of Football
Section 1: Other Major Sports Are Inherently Inferior to Pro Football and Therefore Unworthy of Our Time
Section 2: A People’s History of Football Fanaticism
Section 3: The Football Fan Is the Next Evolution of Man
Article II: The Fundamentals of Fandom
Section 1: Pick a Team, Any Team. Just Pick One and Only One
Section 2: Who You Root for Defines Who You Are
Section 3: The Memory of Your Team’s Epic Playoff Loss Will Set the Tone for All Your Future Personal Failures
Clause A: The Most Epic Chokes
Section 4: Choose a Player to Idolize Based on His Carefully Crafted Public Persona
Section 5: Know Thine Enemies, So You Can Identify Them After Crushing Their Skulls into Powder
Section 6: Bandwagon Fans: Can’t Live with Them, Can’t Line Them Up and Melt Their Insides with a Flamethrower
Clause A: How to Identify a Bandwagon Fan
Section 7: Choose Your Friends Based on Football Allegiances—and Maybe Their Parent’s Beach House
Section 8: Learn to Deal with People Who Actively Dislike Sports While Somehow Resisting the Urge to Strangle Them
Article III: The Formative Years of Fandom
Section 1: Matriculate into College (So You Can Learn That Word Doesn’t Mean Advancing a Football)
Section 2: The Liberal Arts Agenda Against Fandom
Section 3: Attend a Game a Week and a Class Per Semester: A Fan’s Guide to Higher Education
Section 4: Befriend NFL Prospects Now, While They’ll Still Let You Do Their Homework for Them
Clause A: The Duties for the Aspiring Hanger-on
Section 5: Watch Football While Tripping Balls: Drugs and Gameday
Section 6: Countries Most Likely to Cease Being Useless and Catch Football Fever
Section 7: Land a Football-Related Job
Section 8: Root for Your Team from Afar
Article IV: The Two-Minute Driven Life
Section 1: You Can’t Have a Tailgate of One
Section 2: Make the Game Part of Your Game: Picking Up Women
Section 3: Convenient Conditioning for the Football Fatty
Section 4: The Diner Quiz For a Post-Post-Diner Generation
Clause A: The Football Manifesto Mate-Matching Metric
Section 5: The Obligatory Guidelines for Female Fans
Clause A: Ground Rules for Female Fans
Section 6: Vow to Have a Football-Themed Wedding
Section 7: Raise Your Kids to Root for Your Team Through Coercion
Section 8: Acceptable Levels of Involvement in Your Kid’s Pop Warner League
Section 9: Scenes from a Broken Fan Marriage
Section 10: Lord Your Personal Success Over Baseball Fans Because You Don’t Spend All Your Time Watching Baseball
Article V: Gameday Operating Procedure: The Gop that Wants You to Have Fun
Section 1: Flout the Fan Conduct Policy
Section 2: Personal Seat Licenses Are a Bigger Rip-off than Buying a Home
Section 3: Your New Pair of Underwear Is to Blame for a Ten-Loss Season
Section 4: Tailgating Is the Pregame Alcohol-Based Ritual of Kings
Clause A: Avoid Tailgating Scenesters
Clause B: Tailgating Grub: Meat, Meat, More Meat, Wash Down with Beer, Repeat with Meat
Section 5: Get Pumped for Victory in the Game You’re Not Playing
Section 6: The High Five Is an Intricate Art Not to Be Toyed With
Section 7: Like All Extreme Sports, Running onto the Playing Field Is Dumb and Wrong—and Irresistible
Section 8: The Challenge of the Superfans
Section 9: Gamble, Because of Course You’re Smarter than Vegas
Section 10: Probably Should’ve Known Before You Bought Those Season Tickets: Watching a Game at Home Is Far Better than the Stadium Experience
Article VI: The Fantasy Football Chapter (Now with Tear-Out Cheat Sheet!)
Section 1: Fantasy Baseball Is for Geeks but Fantasy Football Is for Men
Section 2: Know Your Fantasy League or Know Draft Defeat
Section 3: Naming Your Fantasy Team, or Which Anchorman Reference Shall You Go With?
Section 4: The Fantasy Draft Is the Only Time Being an Unrepentant Homer Doesn’t Help
Clause A: Draft Trash-Talk Tips
Section 5: Fantasy Football Magazines Are the Most Useless Thing You’ll Reflexively Purchase Each Year
Section 6: A Letter to Brian Westbrook Regarding His Questionable Playing Status for Sunday
Section 7: Issue Threats to People Who Veto Your Fantasy Trades
Article VII: A Fan for All Seasons
Section 1: Seventeen Weeks of Sweet Delusion
Section 2: Strategies for a Losing Season: Blame All Parties Involved
Section 3: Drink Deep of the Haterade, That Cool, Refreshing Drink
Section 4: When “Wait ’Til Next Year” Is an Annual Mantra, or the Fan Bases of the Damned
Section 5: The Week Between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl Is the Tool of the Devil (as Well as the Networks, Which Are Run by the Devil)
Section 6: If You Need Don Cheadle to Motivate You for the Playoffs, You Aren’t a Fan
Section 7: Super Bowl Parties Are for Amateurs—but Still Worth It
Section 8: Celebrate a Title, Bitches!
Article VIII: Surviving the Endless Off-Season
Section 1: Your End of the Year Denial Is So Strong You’ll Actually Watch a Part of the Pro Bowl
Section 2: Feign an Interest in Other Sports and Other People
Section 3: Oh, No! Your Favorite Player Left in Free Agency! Disown Him at Once!
Clause A: The Five Stages of Free Agent Dejection
Section 4: The Draft Is Excruciating, but in April You’ll Take Anything You Can Get
Clause A: The NFL Draft Drinking Game
Section 5: The Arena League and the CFL Are a Sickening Farce and Not Even the Good Kind of Sickening Farce
Section 6: Beware the Post–NBA Finals Misery Vortex
Section 7: Training Camp Is Miserable for the Athlete, Only Kind of Boring for You
Section 8: Observe Madden Day Like the National Holiday It Should Be
Section 9: Dupe Yourself into Thinking the Preseason Matters
Article IX: Take Fandom to Unhealthy Levels—Then a Little Further
Section 1: Fandom on the Intarwebz!!11!
Section 2: Heed the Officially Licensed Section on NFL Apparel and Merchandise
Section 3: Dress Your Pet, Because They Can’t Tell You It’s Lame
Section 4: The Mystery of Trash-Talking
Clause A: The Laws of Trash-Talking
Section 5: “Can You Please Sign My Newborn?”: Autograph Hunting
Section 6: Pester God to Intercede on Your Team’s Behalf
Section 7: Fortify Your Conversations with the Power of Football Clichés
Section 8: Get Tat Up from the Mat Up
Article X: Death: Because Only Al Davis can Live Forever
Section 1: Retirement or “Which Team Do I Like, Again?”
Section 2: Your Team Relocated to Another City! Your Entire Life Was All for Naught!
Section 3: Buying a Team Means Buying the Affections of Millions, Even as You Screw Them
Section 4: Remain Die-hard Even When You’re About to Die
Section 5: To a Bears Fan Dying Yo
ung
Section 6: Hector Your Favorite Players into the Hall of Fame
Section 7: On Death and Deep-frying
Section 8: The Afterlife, or As It’s Known in Football-Speak, the Post-Life
Epilogue: This Book Gets Summ-ed Up! Clap, Clap, Clap-Clap-Clap!
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the work of Johan Gutenberg, Al Gore, and the Rooney family. Also, these people:
First and foremost, my family: my mom and dad, Christina, Angie, Marissa, Alexandra, and Colleen.
My second, hipper, blacker family: Kevin Merida and Donna Britt, who drove me to start writing and are therefore responsible for every bad joke in this book; the immensely talented Hamani Britt-Gibson, who owes me twenty dollars; and my weekly football confidant and TV murderer Darrell Britt-Gibson.
Internet dick-joke-slinging brethren: Drew Magary, Matt Ufford, Jack Kogod, Joshua Zerkle, and the shadowy figure that is flubby. As well as our Uproxx benefactors Jarret Myer and Brian Brater. And Jerry Thompson, who makes it run smoothly.
JoAnn Bruch, to whom I owe my all-consuming football fanaticism.
My editor Matthew Benjamin: You took a chance on me and made this mystifying process remarkably easy. Apologies again for all the bukkake jokes in the first draft.
Much thanks to my compatriots in Web-based onanistic sportswriting for continued support, inspiration, and Brazzers.com log-ins: Will Leitch, Nick Dallamora, Sarah Sprague, Mike Florio, Stefan Fatsis, DJ Gallo, Spencer Hall, Brian Powell, Raquel Frisardi, Dan Shanoff, Matt Johnson, Gourmet Spud, Brooks Melchior, The Mighty MJD, Vince Mancini, Dan Levy, Chris Cooley, Wright Thompson, Cajun Boy, Chris Cotter, Michael Grass, Rob Iracane, J. E. Skeets, Grimey, Scott Van Pelt, the Brothers Mottram, Sarah Schorno, Dan Steinberg, Enrico Campitelli Jr., and A. J. Daulerio.
Friends, well-wishers, and people who don’t wish me any specific harm: Ralston Yorrick, Jessica Rinne, Aaron Andzik, Joe Nese, Barbara Lindell, Vanessa Parra, Lana Chung, Rob Ullman, Candice Bloch, Jon Lewis, Elahe Izadi, Ben Domenech, Adam Claus, and Rachel Freedenberg.
Katie, Sterling, Nena, Sal, Scrappy, Jobie, and the rest of folks at the Pour House with whom I share my boozy autumn Sundays and screaming fits.
The readers and commenters at Kissing Suzy Kolber: When they aren’t cussing me out or dismissively commenting “meh” on my posts, they’re making me eternally grateful not to be writing any more ten-inch stories on county council meetings. Thanks, assholes!
ARTICLE I
The Supremacy of Football
I.1 Other Major Sports Are Inherently Inferior to Pro Football and Therefore Unworthy of Our Time.
Professional football is the undisputed god-king of American sports. It always has been so, even back in the times when we hadn’t quite realized it yet. The mere existence of pro football obviates the need for all other contests of athletic skill, yet these other “sports” (parlor games, really) remain despite their complete and utter irrelevance. Why we abide by such unnecessary, quasi-athletic diversions when we have the game of football is a testament to our modern excess.
To be fair, these other “sports” do serve some minor purpose. And not only to give us something to mock. Because the NFL has yet to genetically produce elite athletes able to withstand the rigors of a year-round schedule (why the hold up?), we’re left with nearly seven desolate months of no meaningful football. During these dark times of despair, some of these lesser sports are all we have to stave off the clammy hands of adult responsibilities and a social life. They’re passable, if barely adequate, distractions to fill the hours until the late summer rolls around. That’s all. Nothing more. Certainly nothing to get worked up about.
However—and it should come as a great shock—there are depraved individuals out there who maintain that some of these other “sports” can produce a level of enjoyment on par with the NFL. The sickest among these deviants even insist that others sports can provide a preferable viewing experience to professional football. As if such a thing were actually possible. Wrongheaded as this belief is, our permissive, increasingly soccer-tolerant culture has allowed it to propagate in certain circles with an air of acceptance. It’s high time we set the record straight. In doing so, hopefully we can reach these woefully misinformed souls before they do something unforgivable like purchase season tickets to the Red Sox.
Baseball—In 1987, Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell memorably attempted, and epically failed, to enumerate ninety-nine reasons why baseball is better than football. Of course it didn’t take him more than five to screw the whole thing up. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at Wrigley Field is supposed to be a virtue? I guess that’s a possibility if one were to disregard the famously awful renditions by Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Gordon, and dozens of other celebrity duffers. More to the point, the Major League Baseball regular season lasts approximately two and a half lifetimes and feels at least three times that long. A Lord of the Rings movie doesn’t drag on as much. By the time it gets halfway interesting in September and October, football season has already begun. Poor timing on your part, besuboru. Half the players in the league now require the services of an interpreter to tell fans to fuck off (at least have the courtesy to cuss me out in my own language, Ichiro). The game falls back on its puffed-up long-gone era of cultural import; meanwhile, MLB playoff games draw about half the audience of an NFL regular season contest. And any sport that considers Bartolo Colon an athlete immediately gets bumped down to second-tier status. At least the fatties in football can block. Unless they play for the Rams.
Basketball—Thanks, but I prefer to stick with sports that I know are only probably fixed. Not to mention those whose leagues aren’t teetering on the brink of insolvency. Contraction is a very real threat for several NBA teams, which figures to ruin the lives of nearly dozens of rabid hoop fans. Besides, the NBA Playoffs drag on about as long as the baseball regular season. The perennial powerhouse Spurs might be the most unlikeable team in all of sports. The most compelling story line in recent years is the never-ending drama surrounding LeBron James’s eventual departure from Cleveland, as though anyone found LeBron even remotely likeable. And, okay, sure, college basketball is a hoot (for about a month, anyway), but anything that Duke excels at is ruined for all parties involved. Not to mention the disconcerting correlation between getting older and the creepiness of getting emotional about teenagers committing to a certain school.
College Football—The bastard cousin of professional football exists solely as a refuge for aged frat boys and Southerners. Proponents will harangue you endlessly about its superiority to the pro game, claiming that the atmosphere at a college football game is far more raucous than its professional counterpart and that student athletes play for love, not money (okay, love, under-the-table gifts from the university, the promise of future riches, boylike adulation from boosters, and poon up to your hairline). All this is actually fairly accurate, but ultimately moot, because the NCAA refuses to implement a playoff system, opting to continue with its convoluted Bowl Championship Series, which leads to the annual screwing of more deserving teams in favor of USC and Ohio State. It may be true that the way college football conducts overtime is technically fairer, since each team is guaranteed at least one possession. Problem is, it takes goddamn forever. I will say in college football’s defense that at least Duke sucks at it.
Soccer—Soccer fans will never fail to remind you that there are more people around the globe who follow “the Beautiful Game” than what they dismissively refer to as “American football.” That’s all well and good, Ronaldinminihinho, but there are also more people around the world living in abject poverty than in America, so let’s all jump on that bandwagon too!
Rugby—I’m not even sure rugby fans actually like their sport so much as they enjoy snottily explaining to you how much tougher rugby is than football because r
ugby players don’t wear helmets or pads. Rugby could actually be fun to watch, but you’ll get so tired of the bombardment of smug coming from the guy who spent a summer abroad in Australia that you’ll never actually bother to check it out. That, and their fans wear scarves. You know the other type of fans who love scarves? Harry Potterphiles. From this we can conclude that rugby is one step removed from Quidditch.
NASCAR—Fess up, racing fans. This is just an excuse to spend an entire day getting plastered, isn’t it? Not that football isn’t, but at least football fans don’t make it quite so obvious. Nor do they need a hefty supply of OxyContin to make it through the sheer crushing repetition that is watching cars circle a track eight thousand times.
Formula One—Like NASCAR, but for foreigners, meaning it’s even more boring and nobody is allowed to pass anyone else.
Tennis—If the argument in favor of tennis doesn’t begin and end with Ana Ivanovic, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova, then you’re wasting your breath. Your heaving, luscious breath. Whew. Excuse me.
Golf—Mark Twain’s famed axiom that the game is “a good walk spoiled” doesn’t quite tell the whole story. It’s a waste of a lot of money too. Sure, Tiger Woods is amazing, but even when he plays injured, he still blows the field away. Where’s the drama in that? John Daly does tailgate like a pro, however.
Boxing—Because the sweet science has been off the radar of the casual sports fan for such a long period of time, it’s mostly the purists that have hung on to keep this sport afloat. And my God, they’re fucking annoying.
Scripps National Spelling Bee—Most viewers would not categorize a spelling bee as a sporting contest, but there it is on ESPN each spring. Worse than watching the Indian kid get screwed out of the title every year is observing all the twee Decemberist-listening pseudo-intellectual fans fetishizing a contest that requires inflexible rote memorization and no imagination while crowing about how they can spell “postlapsarian” off the top of their head. I hope they get run over by a newspaper truck.
Bowling—Jerome Bettis once bowled a 300 game, which proves anyone can bowl their weight. It just so happens that this corresponds to a perfect game.