A Football Primer, Part 1: Your Sports All Suck

Football season is almost upon us, and as per usual, my heart breaks at the thought that there are still benighted souls out there who don't partake of fandom for The Most Telegenic of Sports. It's understandable, really; Football is a complicated sport, with a steep learning curve once you get past the why-are-those-guys-wearing-tights phase. But it's an incredibly rewarding sport to watch and fanicate to.

So why football over other sports?

Soccer is the most enjoyable sport to watch live, with a wonderful mix of pacing, drama and athleticism. It's more fun to watch live than football is. If you go to a pro football game, you'll be astonished at the sheer speed and level of athleticism -- TV really doesn't do justice to how fast these guys go and how hard they hit -- but it's incredibly hard to actually follow the game without superimposed yellow down lines and commentators with Xs and Os telling you why the home team needs to give the corner some safety help, for the love of god. Soccer, on the other hand, has a big white ball that's easy to follow, slow-developing but dynamic plays, and guys in shorts with great legs for those that go in for such things.

On TV, alas, it is incredibly boring. I'm not quite sure why.

Hockey is just like soccer, but it's colder, you can't see the ball, and instead of grabbing their shins and singing a brief number from Il Pagliaccio whenever another player runs into them, they just punch each other.

Boxing is hockey without the skating.

Mixed Martial Arts is boxing, but sweatier and with repeated nad-punching. Also, homoerotic as hell.

Baseball is an actuarial exercise cleverly disguised as a sport. They also sell hot dogs at the games, so there's that.

Never got over the thrill of being on Math Team? Lack the imagination for D&D? Then by god, have I got a sport for you.

Basketball apparently involves some strategy. Apparently.

"Guys! Don't bunch up! Don't bunch up! We worked on this in practice, damnit!"

Women's Volleyball is awesome, but only available in significant quantities during the Olympics.

Curling has the same problem as women's volleyball, plus you won't be able to explain to yourself why it's so damn compelling.

For the record, this is NOT why I love curling. It is, however, about 13 levels of awesome.

Golf has the why-the-hell-am-I-loving-this factor, at least on TV. There's a pretty healthy why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this factor if you ever actually play it, too.

Even Strip Golf is the most boring Strip Sport in the world if you actually have to play it.

NASCAR will remain deadly boring until they start mounting chainguns on the cars. This is just a fact of life.

Some day, some fine and wonderful day, she will be mine, and Steve Jackson shall ride shotgun.

Football, on the other hand, is incredibly watchable. It's broken up into setpiece plays that allow time in between for kibbutzing and yelling at the instant replay, but unlike baseball, those setpiece plays are actually interesting. It's violent like hockey, boxing or MMA, but just controlled enough that you can pretend you're not enjoying watching guys trying to use their entire bodies as murder weapons even though you totally are. It has a depth of strategy that rewards a studious approach to the sport; if you're a geek, there is no sport closer to a tabletop wargame or RPG than this. Plus, there's tight pants with tight buns in them for one-half-plus-ten-percent of us, and cheerleaders for the other one-half-plus-ten-percent.

It is the perfect sport for the televised age. People have been fooling themselves attaching the phrase to baseball for far too long; watching football is America's Pastime.

Next time: The game explained.

-- The Prolix Wag
"Because I'm Clinton Portis, that's why."