This is for all of us kids who were pressured by the other kids to like football against our will. The way it was made into a test of masculinity, that if you weren’t crazy about football, it meant you were a “faggot”, a “wussy”, a “pussy”. The extremely aggressive homophobia (even from kids too young to know what it actually meant) forced kids to pretend to like football just so they wouldn’t be accused of being “faggots”, all because of some artificially contrived, phony exaggerated ideal of “macho.”
Objectively, it was hard for me to see what was so damned important about football that it had to dominate the life of all American boys. In grade school I was interested in science and (even though I was tall, mesomorphic, and well-built, I wore glasses) it was obvious to me that a well-developed intellect and understanding of science were much more important in the world of today than playing football. But no, you didn’t count for anything in that school unless football was the main thing you cared about. Growing up in Cleveland, a city totally ruled by the Browns, probably aggravated the issue. But, science geeks and other misfits, if you ever felt ostracized as a kid for daring to not be a football fan, here’s your chance to sound off.
Strangely, I love it now, but I was a too cool punk rocker in my younger years. Before that, I was just to creatively hyper and twisted to find three hours in front of the tele productive.
It wasn’t until my freshman year in college, when I roomed with a very opiniated Bears fan that I discovered what football truly meant.
Drinking beer and giving your freinds a hard time for three hours in front of a tele.
Hell, I don’t even know the friggin rules to football. I know that a pigskin is thrown around, and a bunch of guys chase it, or something to that effect. I just can’t get interested in that sort of thing.
I know how to play football, I know the rules, I’ve even played on an intramural team. And I’ll watch the Super Bowl and select other games. But I still don’t understand the insane, crazed devotion of its fans. It’s like stated above, if you don’t absolutely NEED football to live, you’re some kind of sub-man. At least once a season I get asked “so who’s your team”? To which I reply that I really don’t have one or even care, and I get funny looks.
As a slight aside, I saw a personal ad once on the net where the young lady claimed to be a huge football fan, and she was trying to use this as a factor in her favor, something that would make her appealing to men. Ack! The LAST thing I want is a girlfriend who’s exactly like all my guy friends!
I was just a theater fag. Football to me was just the game my boyfriend played on Saturdays. It’s odd how people that WATCH football will accuse those who don’t of being “faggots”, “sissy” etc. but there’s Sooooo many gay boys playing the game itself.
I grew up in a town that had no high school football team; our school was really too small to support one. My dad was (and is) not a big sports fan, so I really had no way to learn much about football. I still have only the most rudimentary knowledge of the rules, and almost no knowledge of the teams themselves.
Besides, in eastern Kentucky, football is something you watch to pass the time while you’re waiting for basketball season to really get going. (How we ever produced Tim Couch I’ll never know.)
I’ve already seen that show before…
It’s the spectacle of watching human beings who belong to a lineage that has been bred like cattle for a millenia; do things that only people who have been bred like cattle for a millenia can do. It is the T.V. program where you say numbers and names with great enthusiasm. I found the whole event to be quite boring. I don’t keep up on the re-runs.
Footall had almost zero impact in my hometown (suburban Boston). No special importance placed on liking or not liking it.
Ice hockey and baseball were big, but I can’t recall anyone judging me based on my like or dislike of them (had I claimed to be a Yankees fan, that would have been another story).
I didn’t and don’t like Football. Never played, don’t watch it on TV. Not even the Super Bowl.
Football was practically a religion at my high school in New Jersey, but I don’t recall my indifference getting me in any trouble. It’s probably because I was in the marching band. I went to all the games, so I was apparently a participant. I just never paid any attention to the games.
Football was never “big” in our house. I never got into it. For one thing, I hated how the action kept stopping every few seconds while people milled about. When I was growing up there were other things to do, like riding my bike (and later, my motorcycle) and playing with my friends. In jr. high, I liked volleyball and soccer; but that was just in school. It was more fun going down to the San Diego Navy Sailing Club and renting a little 14-foot Capri and catching the wakes from the tuna boats. There was never any stigma to not paying attention to football. (I did collect some miniature helmets though, which were given away as premiums at gas stations.)
I started watching football last year. I fully expected to hate it. But instead of watching it as a “sport”, I watched it as if it were a game of chess. Like chess, football is like a war fought on a small scale and very stylized. Once I changed my point of view, I actually found it interesting. I don’t support any team, as I hacen’t watched enough to develop any “loyalties”. I remember as a kid, seeing games played in the snow. I saw the Patriots game last year that was played in the snow. I think the weather made it more interesting than games played in domes or in good weather.
I never saw the appeal of football, never played it, almost never watched it. But I was lucky not to get picked on for not loving the game, probably because our school didn’t have a team of its own. Students at our school were welcome to play on the team of the neighboring school district, but few did. Even so, academics were never a high priority at my school: basketball, wrestling, soccer (especially girls’), and music were higher on the list.
Some of you guys were lucky for growing up in a place where it wasn’t such a big deal. I can see now that a large part of my misfortune had to do with growing up in Cleveland! In my school it wasn’t enough to watch the game; you had to go out and play it. In 6th grade one of the lunkhead bruisers asked me if I’d gone out for the football team. I said no. He said, “Why? Couldn’t take it?”
Cal, that’s odd. In my area of the Garden State high school football wasn’t that big. Maybe its’ because our local teams sucked. I was in the marching band (Go Marching Indians!) and it never really caught my attention, except for a really good punt return or the rare good hit. When I got to college I started to love it. Maybe its’ because the level of play was raised like tenfold. Now I love football, but only collegiate [sic]. Maybe that will change when I get out of school.
I never had a problem growing up because of my lack of interest. A typical conversation might go like this:
Someone: Hey, do you like football?
Me: No, I’m more of a baseball person.
S: That’s cool. What’s your team?
M: Phillies!
S: Bwhah hah hah hah hah!
M: {sulk}
I grew up in New Mexico and California, and it was never a big deal that I don’t like football. I live in Oklahoma now, and the homophobic shit does get thrown at anyone who doesn’t like football- I’m talking about grown men here.
There is a type of football fan who mutates into a sub-human during football season; they all seem to live in Texas and Oklahoma…
I always hated football as a kid, and now as an adult I still hate it. I first got a bad impression of it when all the kids I already hated because they picked on me for other things (I was the classic “dweeb” in school) also liked to play football, and they also picked on me because I didn’t like football. When I was in the seventh grade we played touch football in PE class. The coach just assumed we all knew how to play it and he wouldn’t take time to explain it to those of us who didn’t know the game (the concept of a boy who didn’t know how to play football was foreign to him). I was meandering around out there on the field with not a clue in the world what the hell I was supposed to do, so I just putzed around for most of the period. I was always the last one picked when team captains chose their players, but I didn’t care. My dad played football in high school and he was regarded as one of the best players. I’m just glad he didn’t try to shove it down my throat and make me play it, too, just because he did it and became a star athlete in his school.
I have no more appreciation for football now than I did as a kid. I don’t like the mentality that seems to come with hard-core football fans (the guys who invite 6 or 7 of their buddies over to waste a Saturday afternoon in front of the TV drinking beer and making complete asses of themselves while wearing their own football jerseys, or worse yet, painting their faces and chests with their team colors). I can’t stand it when they start screaming at the TV because some player didn’t make a touchdown, or the ones who act as if the world is coming to an end just because their team lost. It’s just a game, for God’s sake! Now, for someone who has a big bet riding on the game, I can somewhat understand the grief over such a loss, but then, there are other ways I prefer to gamble.
I was very proud of myself early this year as I set a new record low for number of days (two days) before the Superbowl before I had any idea which teams would be playing. I could not make even so much as a semi-intelligent explanation if someone were to ask me how football is played. My explanation would be about as good as the explanation Blalron offered.
I never took much to football. I did play one year in middle school and hated it. Mostly because of the coach who was a prick. I don’t mind watching it too much, but I don’t watch but a few minutes here and there. Though I will watch the Super Bowl, mostly just to have buds over and have a few beers and pizza etc.
I was a nerd and a loner growing up and I was also (and still am) totally uninterested in team sports. Luckily, I didn’t get a lot of grief about it. I grew up near Philadelphia and in Michigan.
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that my Dad wasn’t into sports. He never watched games on TV or talked about sports when people came to visit.
Is this also the case with others here who aren’t sports fans?
I was a big guy and told to be on the high school football team.
To anyone who would listen, I told them I wasn’t interested.
Regardless, I was “told” to be on the football team.
For two years, those a**holes made me go out there and be on their damned football team.
Finally, Junior year in high school, the coach said, “What’s your problem?”
I told him I didn’t want to play football two years ago, and I still don’t want to play it today.
They finally let me “out”, but I was ignored by the coach and he made sure most of the rest of the guys on the team ignored me for the next two years as well.
So not only did they make sure I hated football for the rest of my life, they taught me that these athletes also have a tendency to be spineless, clique-ish, fair-weather sons-a-bitches.
Years later, the similarities to Fascist Youth Groups became clear.
I now dislike almost all team sports.
If it is not a single athlete competing against others, I have no interest whatsoever.
