Men, Women, and Football

An occasional recurring theme here at ComicsAnd is a discussion about how men and women view the world differently. This week I shall describe how men and women view the game of Football differently.

Let's say a man and a woman are football fans. For sake of discussion, let's say they are both fans of a football team in the Superbowl. Oh, I don't know... let's pick one of the two teams... ummmm, how about the Patriots.

So, our hypothetical man and woman are fans of the Patriots and they are watching the biggest game the Patriots have ever played with EVERYTHING AT STAKE. And, just for hypothetical conversation, let's say the Patriots stink the joint up and play the worst game of their lives!
On national television...
For the world to watch...
Blowing a chance at immortality.
And, to add insult to injury, they manage to lose to a Manning no less.

Now, a man will sit there and watch the game. He may use the edge of his seat but he will sit and stew. And smolder, and grow more sullen as the minutes tick by and it becomes evident the Patriots are going to lose the game. You can imagine how sullen a person would get after 4 hours of such misery.

Now a woman will sit there for awhile. Then she will stand. Then she will pace. Inbetween the pacing she will try and talk to the man. Things like "Maybe Brady should try throwing the ball where one of his receivers can catch it!" Typically, such comments will get a grunt of a response from the man and little else because he is trying to watch the game.

Once it's obvious the man is not going to talk, a woman will begin talking to Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, directly. Things like "Throw the ball already!" When it's obvious that Brady is also not listening to her, she may move on to the head coach "HOW ABOUT SOME F-IN PROTECTION SO HE CAN THROW THE BALL!"

Needless to say, screaming to the equally unresponsive coach on the screen, tends to irritate the man.

Then, once it's all over, the man and woman can only stare at each other in shock. There's nothing left to say. The man said nothing during the game. The woman didn't stop talking once during the game. As a man, you know there is nothing left to do but quietly go to bed and ponder how the impossible happened.

BUT WAIT! As a woman you know there's still PLENTY of time to talk. There is time to dicuss how much it sucks! There's time to relive EVERY SINGLE GORY PLAY IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL. Why go to bed when you can talk about four of the worst hours of your life ALL OVER AGAIN?!

And, the super-duper worst part. The man MUST RESPOND now because the television is off and he has no excuse. "Yes I..", "Well it wasn't..", "It could have something to do with..." are all half sentences that are used. This can go one for a whole 30 minutes with no end in sight until the man pretends to fall asleep. This will earn the man some well deserved silence. Please note, it may cost an apology and flowers the next day but at the time it is sooooo worth it.

Finally, once the misery is over, everyone can go to bed.
And, get up the next day.
And, go to work with the radio off so you don't have to listen to how the Patriots blew a chance at immortality.
And, hide in your office so people won't talk to you about the game.
And, not go to ESPN.com or Si.com once (not once) so you don't have to read about the Patriots disaster.

And, that should be the end of the story. As the books say, the man has crawled into his emotional cave and buried all the hurt and pain the Patriots have caused him. Luckily, Women have no such problems and after reading every single one of the FOUR THOUSAND articles on the internet can be ready to discuss it AAAALLLLLLL again Monday night after the kids go to bed.

FOR ANOTHER 45 MINUTES because the 4 hours watching the game and 30 minutes after the game weren't enough already. It was awesome.

Ummm, I mean, in this hypothetical situation it would have been awesome to have the ability to discuss football to such glorious depths with someone I loved.

Yeah. That's it.