Training camp
by Jon Worley

I like playing baseball better than any other sport. I like watching soccer better than any other sport. But it is the impending start of football season which always causes me to lay down the most severe preparations.

First, I have to get reacquainted with the finer aspects of the remote control. When Tennesee/Florida is on one channel and Michigan/Michigan State is on the other (highly unlikely, but still), it always pays to be skilled with the latex buttons. Can't miss a fumble or terrific hit on the QB.

And because my wife has always worked on Saturdays in recent years, she hasn't been around to complain about my viewing habits (which usually meant having he TV playing loudly in one room and semi-working in another, with frantic runs to the TV when the announcers got excited). My wife always worked late on Sundays, so she always got a few digs into me about my slavish devotion to a certain NFL team that wears red and white. There is always an excuse to go out of my way to watch a meaningless game. I'm a big Chiefs' fan, but even I have a hard time explaining why I need to find a sports bar that will be televising the KC-Saints game. I mean, if they win, it's expected, and if they lose, then I will have to sit through four quarters of taunting from loud-mouthed Ditka freaks. The simple fact of the matter is I'm going to have to learn to transfer some of these evasive action tactics to Saturdays if I am going to catch much of this fall's college football season.

It's precisely that taunting situation where my technique needs the most work. Barbara's not that hard to finesse. I'm not the sort of husband who watches Monday Night Football religiously (though we don't miss Chiefs or key AFC West games), and she never makes a fuss when I watch Primetime on ESPN (even the midnight re-run after a particularly good day, and anyway, they always show Marcus Allen highlights, which she can't get enough of seeing). No, I need to toughen my skin for the remarks that always fly when I enter a bar in my team's colors.

"When's the last time your team was in the Super Bowl?" is a regular epithet. If the expansive gentleman who uttered it happens to be wearing a Seahawks or Oilers shirt, well, I have my ammunition ready and waiting. But if the guy is sporting a Jerry Rice or (the horror) Michael Irvin jersey, well, I don't have much room to speak. Indeed, at my recent high school reunion, a friend of mine reminded me of my bet with him that the Chiefs would get to the Super Bowl by 1987. He didn't seem to remember that I paid off that $20 debt by giving him a tape of Licensed to Ill that had cost me $5 at Wal-Mart. It's a little weird to sacrifice the Beastie Boys for Frank Gansz's honor, but still. I'm rather proud of the way I honorably welshed on that bet.

I really need to get in shape for the Cowboys fans. These people are the most insufferable folks on the face of the earth. There's an excuse for everything, from Michael Irvin's interesting bit of two-face play (wife and God on one side, coke and strippers on the other) to Rafael Septien's child molesting conviction years back (one fan I knew went so far as to say the sex was consensual). These people do not respond to logic, only taunts or threats. And the women are more aggressive and annoying than the men. First, they know the games better, and if I slip up and say that Emmitt ran for 107 instead of 108 yards in some game three years ago, I know I'll never have a chance to get back into the argument. Like we're arguing about anything important, you might say. That is the problem, as for its fans, Cowboys football is a matter of honor, God and country, in that order.

So it's lots of bragging about Missouri football (no winning seasons since 1982) here in Penn State country (this bit of scrimmaging worked equally well down in Florida, even amongst Miami fans) to get my ego down to size and to burnish my skin to a nice, tough smoothness. Personally, I think the cult of Joe Paterno is a little strange, but folks in Florida think that Steve Spurrier can not only walk on water but also skin a 'gator one-handed while he's doing it. Next to that, JoePa is merely a minor deity.

I suppose my regimen isn't that rough, but he'll it's not like I'm playing competitive football. There isn't much call for a dead-slow 5-11, 170 guy anywhere. Except behind the bar.

Jon Worley brews his own in York, Pennsylvania. He still hasn't located a local bar that will be showing Chiefs' games this fall, but he won't give up until the last tittie bar has been surveyed.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page