or wtf is up with all this football?
The bar is packed with young twenty somethings, sweating in the hot Texas sun, sipping on cheap 2.50 Pbr tallboys. No one is talking and all eyes are thus diverted to the television. There are shouts, flaying arms, stomping and profane words projected at the screen.
It's a Dallas Cowboys football game.
One thing I have yet to really understand about Texas is the football culture. I don't like the Cowboys. In fact, the Cowboys are to football what the Yankees are to baseball. I just…don't like what they stand for.
However, I cannot shun the city's beloved team. I might as well have leprosy, limbs falling off and rotting. I would be a social outcast. So I just blend in, sip on my beer and stare at the screen.
Even more so, Atx, has UT Longhorns. The city and the fans are even MORE attached to this team than the Cowboys. There are Longhorn emblems on at least 65% of the cars here.
If this were not enough, I am also teaching After School classes at the high school that won the state championship in their division last year. They BLEED football. Scoring a touch down with the piggy skin creates heros. The quarterback IS the coolest kid in the school. He even dates a cheerleader. I feel like I'm in an after school special on Teen Nick but there is no way to turn it off.
The other after school teachers and I can go to the football games and have the hours count towards work, because it is so important to the school's culture.
Let me repeat that, the hours I spend watching a football game can count towards work.
Let's backup:
The college I attended did not have a football team & I was more than ok with that. I attended one football game during my entire time high school. It was freshman year. I wore red pants but didn't understand what all the commotion was about. If we wanted to hang out, we could do that anywhere. Why would I want to sit in a cold bleacher when I could be out with you somewhere cooler? So we did.
I think football is hyper-masculine (and homophobic) and also promotes an idea of hyperfemininity (cheerleaders). While I don't mind watching sexy man in their late 20's and 30's run around a field in spandex with massive muscles, I'm kind of opposed to the idea itself. So now, Fuck you college education! Fuck you for making me critically analyze gender play in American Sports! I wish I could change over-thinking, and just love football like the rest of Texas, but I can't. There are a lot of disgusting ideas, politic with academics, economic revenue, praise of the athlete, that just create a little unease for me. I'm all for your love of the game, it just can't be mutually shared.
This distaste for American football is going to have to change.Quickly.
Very Quickly.
I'm going to have to learn to love football. I am going to learn high school cheers, I am going to see my students play on the field, I am going to wear school colors and I am going to re-live all those years I spent avoiding the football games... one game at a time.
1 comment:
If it makes you feel better, the Shock won the arena football superbowl and the mayor declared it Spokane Shock day today. Everyone wore orange and painted their faces, even when they weren't at the game. It was ridiculous.
At least you get paid to watch it!
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