Dilly Dilly!

Sir Brad is ready to begin the Pit of Misery tour

Wild Card Weekend was wonderful. It was much too cold to go outside Saturday and Sunday here in Maine, but there were two football games between high-level teams to watch both days. What’s not to like? Next weekend will be similar: two games Saturday — including one with the hometown Patriots at Gillette Stadium — and two more on Sunday. Tremendous athletes at the top of their abilities will compete and I’m a football fan again.

Readers of this column know I’m a political junkie, studying the latest developments for at least two hours every day. I watch Sunday morning political programs on at least two networks, but when afternoon comes I don’t want any more politics. I want to watch football. This season, however, politics creeped into the game during the national anthem and that put a damper on Sunday afternoons for millions of us. It wasn’t good for the teams as they saw lots of empty stadium seats. It wasn’t good for TV networks or the NFL either because they lost viewers. I kept watching Patriots games but some of the shine had gone.

Mainstream media gave national anthem sit-downs and kneel-downs plenty of attention at first. Then it all backfired after President Trump weighed in and accused players of lacking patriotism. Many fans agreed and voted with their feet by staying away from games. They voted with their remotes by refusing to tune in at home on their TVs. Revenue declined. After that, media stopped their political coverage by refusing to film the playing of the national anthem before gametime. Politics went out the exits. Football fields went back to being exclusively athletic arenas and politics didn’t make the playoffs. Hurray for that.

When my family was young there wasn’t time to watch football, but by the Tom Brady era our nest had emptied and suddenly there was time. I could again experience total immersion in a sea of testosterone. Football is a male world and I hadn’t realized how much I missed it. Don’t misunderstand; I love women. I’ve been sleeping next to one for almost forty-seven years. I have a mother, four sisters, three daughters, two granddaughters and love them all. I also spent thirty-six years in education — a female-dominated profession. Even our two family dogs were females. Can I be forgiven if sometimes I prefer the exclusive company of men? Too bad if I can’t.

It’s not just the football that I enjoy. Televised games are full of commercials aimed at men too. They’re mostly ads for pick-up trucks and beer and some are very funny. In one, various people bring gifts of Bud Light beer to a medieval king, who thanks them by saying, “Dilly dilly!” Others present raise their bottles in toast and repeat: “Dilly-dilly!” Then, an unfortunate fellow puts some mead before the king, who is displeased. The king looks at him and says: “Please follow Sir Brad. He is going to give you a private tour of the pit of misery.” As the king’s torturer, Sir Brad, drags the poor guy away, others hold up their beers in toast, chanting: “Pit of misery! Dilly dilly!

The commercial doesn’t sound funny in the least, right? But somehow it is. There’s no explanation beyond that it probably reminds men of ridiculous things they’ve done and laughed about while drinking beer together. It’s 21st century code for, “Eat, drink, and be merry!” It’s completely unserious and beckons others to join the mirth. If “dilly dilly” has any real meaning, nobody can find it.

So what’s the purpose of football? What’s the point of eleven men carrying, throwing, catching, and kicking an oblong piece of inflated leather a hundred yards down a field while eleven other strong, swift men try to stop them? It’s a guy thing, like war without the killing. It satisfies something in the male psyche, but it’s not unrestrained violence. It has rules all participants must obey or be penalized, even ordered to leave the field. Players are judged by their physical ability which is remarkable, their mental acuity under pressure, their teamwork, perseverance, and heart.

And there’s nothing new in all this. The earliest Olympic Games in the 8th century BC were exclusively for men as I learned when visiting the site in 2014. Married women were banned both from competition and from viewing as well, but “maidens” were allowed. Why that distinction was made our guide didn’t say. Perhaps the “maidens” were an ancient equivalent of today’s cheerleaders. Perhaps it was because the men competed while oiled and naked, but then homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece by some accounts. Maybe it was that.

Whatever the reasons for men wishing to spend time away from women once in a while, they go back a long way. It may have become politically incorrect in the 21st century, but it’s not going away.

Against Football? I'm Not

One thing I like about the Portland area is that there’s usually something interesting happening on any given day or night. Last weekend I attended a book promotion at Longfellow Books by author Steve Almond who published “Against Football.” I’m not against it. I love football and plan my weekends around Patriots’ games, but I wanted to hear the writer make his case.

When I go to these things, I’m closeted. Nobody knows me down there and I don’t ask questions which may hint that my thinking is diametrically opposed to almost everything being said. Sometimes I feel like an anthropologist observing another species of hominid in its natural habitat, the very progressive City of Portland, Maine.

Almond

A woman introduced Almond saying he wrote for Salon and Slate as well as several other leftist web sites and publications and they met at a writers’ workshop on the coast. He was dressed in jeans, collarless pullover, and organic-looking shoes. He had a slight build and didn’t look like he had ever played football. He looked like Obama’s “Pajama Boy” without the glasses. Nonetheless, I tried hard to keep my mind open in case he had a case to make. The woman wore tight pants, high leather boots, and a vest-like thing with a Patriots logo over a collarless pullover with extra-long sleeves that covered half her hands leaving only fingers visible. She moved them extensively when talking and claimed to be an avid fan. I thought she asked him too many questions, leaving little time for the audience to ask some.

He claimed he was a fan (which I doubted) and had a hard time weaning himself, but watching football had become a moral quandary. He said it was the concussion thing mostly — that football players had shorter lifespans and were more likely to suffer dementia. He claimed players, mostly black, were exploited by billionaire owners. Watching games would only funnel more money into their pockets. Players were highly paid, but their careers were short.

He said he couldn’t watch men from poor backgrounds sacrifice their bodies for his enjoyment. He said football was “militaristic,” after which I expected he’d say they were dressed in uniforms and took strategic orders from their superiors to knock down men in opposing uniforms - or something like that - but he didn’t. He said football was militaristic because it was like watching soldiers suffering in battle while he was safe and warm in his house, which made him feel guilty. That confused me. Did he feel guilty because he could be safe and warm in his house only because soldiers were willing to suffer in battle? He didn’t elaborate but I was left with the feeling that he just disapproved of the military in general.

He disliked football’s “medieval gender roles” too, and worried his daughters would see muscular men and cheerleaders as sex-role models. He said football was “heteronormative” as if that were something to disdain. It’s a made-up word to slander those of us who think heterosexuality is normal. It’s repeated often on college campuses where people major in “Queer Studies”; “Gender Studies”; “Women’s Studies”; “Whiteness Studies” and such things.

He insisted Richie Incognito bullied fellow Miami Dolphin offensive lineman Jonathan Martin because he was repressing his latent homoerotic attraction to Martin. That analysis seemed so off the mark to me that I looked it up when I got home. Looks like he got it from Keith Olbermann, a hard-left sportscaster who suggested it on ESPN.

He believes the NFL is “completely morally corrupt,” is “racially perverse” and “incredibly classist,” whatever that means. He said, “Football has militarized us” but I didn’t hear a coherent explanation for what he meant by that either. He sees football as an “engine of nihilistic greed” and he’d like “public ownership of teams.” Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Government running the NFL? Look what it’s doing to health care. Government-run schools banned dodge ball in gym class and tag at recess. Just think what it would do to football.

NFL team owners tend to be politically conservative, with most donating to Republicans, but not all. Robert Kraft, for example, donates to Obama. Many players and coaches are conservative Christians as well. None of this was mentioned by Almond in his presentation, but I have to think they were factors in his contempt for the game. Perhaps he goes into these aspects of football in his book, but I won’t be reading it. He said enough in Portland to convince me that would be a waste of my time.