The football is a roundish object, or, as Wikipedia describes it, an “oblong spheroid.” Round balls suffice for most every other sport, but not this one. Likewise, this sport only ever really caught on in the United States for some reason. The game is called football, but it mostly involves the hands, and also a lot of derision from soccer fans. You’ve recently learned that the term “gridiron” has something to do with the sport, though you’ve spent most of your life thinking it was some sort of prison metaphor.
The Super Bowl is the biggest event in football, kind of like the Paris Fashion Week of sports. People buy their tickets years in advance, even though you only find out which teams are playing like a week or two beforehand.
A couple dozen men will pour themselves into slightly translucent Spandex leggings that are so tight you can see every dimple in their beautiful, well-muscled asses. They will then perform maneuvers like squatting, tackling and dogpiling. Somehow, this has been collectively determined to be the gold standard of heterosexual masculinity by the sort of guys who say “no homo” if they accidentally brush elbows.
There are only two football teams: one is the Patriots, and no one knows the name of the other. Even though only one of these teams has a name, everyone is rooting for them to lose. They once had a scandal called Deflategate, which sounds like farts were somehow involved.
Football ostensibly takes place over four quarters, each of which is only fifteen minutes long; in reality it takes much longer than that because there is so much starting and stopping and fumbling and calling an interference and breaking to drink Gatorade and maybe to watch some commercials, just like trying to have sex while drunk, and at times about as satisfying.
Speaking of the commercials, most of them will involve a puppy or a Clydesdale, or if you’re really lucky, both of the above and also some erotic footage of pizza. This is the highlight of the game.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that if a football player takes his helmet off, he’s been crying off his mascara, possibly because he isn’t the one who’s married to Gisele Bundchen. (This applies to all the players except the one who’s married to Gisele Bundchen.)
The teams will be trying to get to the opposite team’s end zone, except at some point they will switch, because right when you think you’re starting to understand the game, fuck you and your logic. Sometimes they will randomly attempt to kick the oblong spheroid through a yellow square that looks on TV to be about the same size of the field, and then when the oblong spheroid goes through everyone will cheer like crazy, even though what the fuck that yellow square is so big how the hell could anyone possibly miss it?? You know nothing about football and have never played a sport, but are confident that even you could make that kick.
In the middle of the game, there will be a twenty-minute set by an artist that you either love or hate, but with no in between. The production value will be so high that it probably could have funded a cure for cancer or the end of world hunger. Afterward, everyone will rave about how the show was either wonderful or terrible, with no in between, but really the only halftime show anyone will even remember a few weeks from now will be the one with Janet Jackson’s nipple, and probably everyone cares more about the commercials anyway.
Some people say football causes concussions, but the real fans know that having 250-pound men launch themselves at each other over and over for a duration of many years could never cause such a thing.
After the halftime show, most of the people at your Super Bowl party will probably have stopped paying attention, just like trying to have sex while drunk, or otherwise be calling their local pizzeria to see if they can deliver an erotic pizza and a puppy and a Clydesdale, just like trying to have sex while drunk. Or does the puppy erotically deliver the pizza while riding a Clydesdale? The commercials can be very misleading.
The next day you return to work, where everyone will make the same joke about how the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday should be a federal holiday. People will talk about how they either loved or hated the halftime show, but nothing in between. Everyone is hungover, either because they were drinking because the Patriots won or drinking because the Patriots lost.
