Keeping My Sanity through the Long Cold Football Season

We went to Brig's annual department summer barbecue for his work.  Because of the BYU/Utah game, attendance was not spectacular.  The nice thing about being from Logan and having gone to Utah State is that I have no dog in that fight.  I'm really not a big football fan anyway.  I remember in my first year of marriage I naively suggested to my husband that maybe he shouldn't watch football on Sundays as he would get so worked up and chase the spirit out of our apartment faster than Jerry Rice running for a touchdown.  Never mind that the spirit was not my main motive.  I just wanted my t.v. back.  I remember him looking at me and saying, "You knew who I was when you married me."  Actually, I didn't.  And he didn't really know me, but who's keeping track? 

In our first month of marriage I returned home from work.  It was chilly and all I wanted to do was to slip into something more comfortable.  Yes, I was a newlywed, but it wasn't any lacies from Vicki's that I was slipping into.  It was my tried and true Denver Broncos sweatshirt I had stolen from my brother's closet while he was on his mission a couple years before.  I looked high and low and couldn't find my warm sweatshirt.  I finally got Brig's attention as he was taking a break from yelling at the television screen as if somehow the quarterback might hear him if he put a little more heat into his blistering barrage.  He briefly denied any knowledge of my beloved sweatshirt's whereabouts.  Then he quickly got back to berating the big oafs running up and down the field a thousand miles away.  A few months later he admitted that my Denver "Donkys" (as he calls them) sweatshirt had went swimming with the fishes at his hands.  That's some serious loathing.  Ah, the great mysteries of marriage. 

Since then I've endured eight long seasons of football.  Both pro and college.  In fact the first thing Brig did when we got to our hotel room on our honeymoon night was turn on the t.v. to check the score on the BYU football game.  He's a hopeless romantic.  The first couple of years I tried to figure out all the rules of the game.  I'd try to at least watch his favorite team play.  But it wore me out quickly.  The thing is I'd be fine with one or two games a week.  But watching his favorite team is not enough.  He needs to watch nearly every game being broadcast on t.v that is humanly possible.  I'm not complaining.  Well, maybe a little.  But mostly now I am resigned to it. 

For years I've tried to get back at him for this insane obsession of his.  So I make him watch "Say Yes to the Dress" with me as well as his personal favorite, "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant" complete with re-enactments.  What's truly amazing about that show is that there is enough people out there who didn't know they were pregnant to constitute a whole series dedicated to telling their stories.  That show disgusts him.  It offends him.  It's absolutely fabulous. 

I'm sure I'm not alone in this.  I'm sure there is a huge cross-section of American females who lament the opening game of Monday Night Football.  Monday Night Football, please.  Except when it's on Thursday night and Friday night and Saturday night and Sunday night.  It's a flippin' travesty...to coin a phrase.  I think often of those brave, long-suffering women out there fighting the good fight.  In the kitchen making bacon-wrapped jalepeno poppers so their men can burn their taste buds off while enjoying a three hour game.  They, like me, pour themselves a stiff drink of their beverage of choice...mine is Coca-Cola, utter a little prayer that February will come soon, and plot their revenge whenever the remote control comes their way.  To my fellow comrades...I salute you.