The Football Fan's Manifesto Part 5

On Tuesday of the second week comes Super Bowl Media Day, where the players are made available to the press, but only after they've been strictly admonished by their coaches not to say anything remotely interesting. Even the most charismatic player won't do much more than taunt desperate reporters in need of a juicy quote. Every possible human interest story will be mined for copy, regardless of the player's spot on the roster. Does a player have a crazy hobby or a sick relative? Well, they're getting a fifty-inch profile in a Sunday paper somewhere around the country. To the relief of all involved, inevitably some wacky female foreign reporter will spice things up by showing up in a wedding dress and trying to propose to one of the quarterbacks. The QB politely demurs with a chuckle before taking her from behind in the hotel an hour later. Unless it's Kurt Warner. He'll just take her to Bible study.

The bleakness of the off-season; it is where fandom goes to die and hope is crushed underfoot. It looms ever closer. So, as tedious as the extra week off is, you must savor it, no matter how forced the joy. In a few short weeks, you'll kill even for this.

VII.6 If You Need Don Cheadle to Motivate You for the Playoffs, You Aren't a Fan Oh, la di da, loogit you, fan of a team that made it to the postseason. Aren't you living high on the hog? Well, snaps to you, fortunate fanboy. Your team has succeeded in stumbling into the playoffs. They're now only a few perilous clambering steps from the mountaintop. What are you willing to do to propel them the rest of the way?

Can you rise to the occasion of the postseason? Are you prepared for an entire month of wearing the same lucky underwear, peeing on the same lucky bush, and jerking it to the same lucky picture of Lucy Pinder? Good. Because whatever's been working for you throughout the year has to be your MO during the run to the Super Bowl. This is no time to waver in your routine. Every behavior from Monday to Friday now becomes immutable from week to week. Let no amount of OCD be enough. The slightest deviation from your path could result in devastation.

In January, your team is counting on you for no less than the totality of your being. That includes all of it, along with, like, your philtrum, duodenum, and mastoid process. Even the several pounds of beef sitting in your intestines that will never be fully digested. You gotta put that to work too. No free rides! You've poured four months of your life into seeing this team into contention, and now, once they're at the doorstep of greatness, you must prove that your compulsion is strong enough to will them to the promised land.

Think I'm exaggerating? Indeed, your very health is at stake. Earlier this year a team of researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California discovered that death rates in Los Angeles rose significantly the day the Rams lost the Super Bowl in 1980 and dipped the day the Raiders won the t.i.tle in 1984. Can't poke holes in that methodology. It's rock-solid proof! YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE! CHEER, CHEER FOR YOUR LIFE!

Cliched though the notion is, the truism stands that everything in the playoff is more intense. The pace is faster, the hits are harder, and fights in the stands are that much more likely to result in cracked crania. You too must respond in kind. Not for a moment should you let your guard down, and most definitely never let your beer down. Do you lose your voice for a day following a game? After a playoff game, it needs to move to three. With the season on the line each week from this point forward, nothing must impede the fan's focus. Every conversation must revolve around the fortunes of the team, and all concerted effort must go to making sure you don't invoke a dreaded jinx with a slip of the tongue that doesn't include "if" prior to a hypothetical situation about the team winning.

Have acquaintances who are fans of your team's next-round opponent? It is inc.u.mbent upon you to disa.s.sociate with them as quickly and as acrimoniously as possible. It is useless to attempt otherwise. Any continued relations will be torn asunder well before kickoff in a flurry of argument spittle and hurt feelings. It's better to call these things off before they get truly ugly. While regular season showdowns can be the stuff of friendly tiffs, playoff contests can drive an unbridgeable gap between the closest of relations. It just so happens that in January 1993, midway through the historic Bills comeback against the Oilers in the Wild Card game, a record three dozen marriages were dissolved as a direct result of the game. Granted, most of these were by virtue of murder-suicides committed by Oilers fans, but technically it holds true.

A word of advice to the backers of top teams: a first-round bye is no time to rest on the laurels of an impressive regular season. Indeed, even with the brief reprieve from the pressures of a do-or-die contest, the Wild Card weekend is not one to be taken lightly by the fan of a dominant team. Recent years have shown that the extra week of rest can make players rusty and ill-prepared to face the high-intensity pace of playoff football. The same can be said of fans. So keep yourself in game shape by getting ready to detest whichever squad emerges from the first round. Pretend-berate people in public to see how your game is holding up. If you get them to flee for their lives, you know you're getting where you need to be.

There are no easy answers for full playoff readiness. It's a tense, nerve-wracking experience for the fan, a trial for the senses. Some fans are clearly not ready for it and their inexperience shows. Remember Bengals fans after the 2005 season? They hadn't seen their team in the post-season in fifteen years, and they weren't able to keep from pa.s.sing out long enough to see Carson Palmer's ACL torn to ribbons. After that, it was lights out all around Paul Brown Stadium. Imagine everything you're used to on a regular Sunday amped up to the n nth degree. Except that you're cheering for your very football lives. Remember, elimination is tantamount to being consigned to the purgatory of an early off-season, all while consequential football is still being played. Knowing what's at stake, a grasp on sanity isn't a luxury you can afford.

7.7 Super Bowl Parties Are for Amateurs-but Still Worth It Super Bowl Sunday is to football what St. Patrick's Day or New Year's Eve is to drinking: a nationally celebrated amateur hour. Everyone, whether they give a s.h.i.+t about the game or not, gathers around the TV for fellows.h.i.+p with friends at the altar of football's biggest stage. This is the holy day when all Americans, no matter how football resistant they may be, have to pay their respects to St.i.tchface, the polytheist G.o.d of football fandom and cowhide leather.

For many viewers, this is the only time all year they're going to be watching a football game. And it shows. They're only watching for the commercials, they declare, right before asking you what const.i.tutes an illegal contact penalty. Be sure to demonstrate on their face. Sure, everyone is at least moderately interested in seeing the commercials, even if the vast majority of them are overlong, overly produced train wrecks brought down by the meddling hands of countless company execs. There're a couple with a monkey. There's five or six with a guy getting hit in the nuts. There's one with a guy getting hit in the nuts by a monkey while Fergie laughs in the background. Lather, rinse, retire to the kitchen for a beer.

Heaven forbid you actually have a vested interest in the game and be stuck in a crowd of casual or neutral viewers. You can't do it. After the first ugly looks they shoot you for being loud you'll want to burn the place down. Friends who know you from a non-sports context will want to discuss work or their lives or some other piddling s.h.i.+t you have no time for. The Super Bowl Party is a social event that has almost nothing to do with the game itself. Snubbing people on your Super Bowl Party guest list only because they lack a pa.s.sion for the game is still considered every bit a harsh dismissal. Blowing them off for not bringing sufficiently good food or drinks is still blessedly legit, and therein you see where the casual football fan finds his use on this day: provider of grub.

There is a way to remedy the dearth of interest in the outcome of the contest. Have the host collect an entry fee from each person who arrives. a.s.sign an equal number of attendees to be considered ad-hoc fans of each partic.i.p.ating team for that night. If it appears to be a lopsided matchup, have people draw the teams out of a hat to prevent them from b.i.t.c.hing at you for sticking them with the eventual losers. The fans of the team that prevails on the field get the kitty at the end of the night. This ensures, at a very least, rapt attention paid toward the game itself and little unrelated socializing.

Drinking games are also vital to the enjoyment of everyone on hand. These are difficult to create in the abstract without knowing which story lines broadcasters will ceaselessly cram down viewers' throats throughout the duration of the game. Worry not, you'll know them well in advance of the day of the game, as the NFL commentariat will have already been droning on about the grand conflict that looms over the contest for a week and change. And G.o.d help you if a star player has announced that the Super Bowl will be his final game, as John Elway and Jerome Bettis have done in the past. Basing your drinking game on mentions of that will render you dead from alcohol poisoning well before the seven-hour pregame show hits its halfway mark.

Another grating element to the Super Bowl is the metric a.s.sload of advertisers who refer to it as "the big game" in their product pushes. Naturally, there's a reason for this and it has to do with fat-a.s.s sacks of cash. You see, the NFL has an exclusive trademark on the term Super Bowl and other phrases a.s.sociated with the game, and its team of intellectual property rights lawyers isn't exactly keen on other companies employing those terms for commercial uses. In fact, the league tried to copyright "the Big Game" as well to no avail in June 2007. Enforcement of name usage isn't the NFL's only battleground, though. The league has tried to block church congregations from watching the game on mammoth TV screens, arguing that public exhibitions on screens larger than fifty-five inches are damaging to ratings. In many of these areas, the league has been successful in protecting its brand, even if it comes at the price of negative press.

Still, even if the people you have to watch the game with are clueless, the commercials suck, and the halftime show only appeals to geriatrics with poor taste in music, it's still an awesome spectacle to behold and, if it happens to be a good game, it can provide the height of the season's drama. Seeing a dramatic finish with the league's grandest prize on the line is just the thing to get you fired up for another season to kick off. Right. f.u.c.king. Now. Except, screw you sideways, it's not coming until September and you've got seven St.i.tchface-forsaken months of barren baseball-filled spring and summer wasteland to occupy before that happens. Surviving the off-season is going to require a little help and a lot of drugs.

7.8 Celebrate a t.i.tle, b.i.t.c.hes!

Seeing your favorite team be victorious in the Super Bowl produces a feeling superior even to having an o.r.g.a.s.m while you're stoned and watching your worst enemy drown in an enclosed tank of raw sewage. It really is that good. I might even be understating it. Yet polite society demands that we list our happiest moments in life as personal, family-type things, like the first time you meet your significant other or the birth of your children, but that's a bunch of treacly Hallmark horses.h.i.+t. Your team's first t.i.tle trumps both of those by about a pa.r.s.ec. Subsequent t.i.tles are ahead as well, though that distance is measured by mere light-years.

Once the initial delirium-fueled shrieking subsides, and you've emptied your tear ducts awkwardly onto the shoulder of the person next to you, it's time to launch into some serious celebration. You didn't suffer this long to settle for some light merriment. No, you're ent.i.tled, nay, obligated to tear the G.o.dd.a.m.n roof off and cause a ruckus. Because who knows if you'll ever get the opportunity again. Chances are you might not. You can't squander a situation that allows for socially acceptable mayhem. That goes beyond fan law. That's some fundamental life s.h.i.+t right there.

Get on the phone and drunk-dial everyone you know. Scream incoherently once you hear the other end pick up. They'll understand. Let them share in your ecstasy. Usually when you're boasting about your favorite team, you have to hold back for the sake of karma biting you in the a.s.s. Well, not now. You just won the t.i.tle. There's nothing to lose. Get outlandish with it.

Once you've blanketed your circle of friends in a tidal wave of braggadocio via texting and drunk-dialing, it's time to really get crazy. Commit a few felonies. Foster some future regrets. Go way the f.u.c.k overboard.

Riot! One consolation if you were too cheap to score Super Bowl tickets is that you'll be around for the unruly riot that immediately follows your team's victory. Even if they lose, there will probably be a riot. If you live in Oakland, this new riot will adjoin the riot already in progress, to form an uber-riot that will take the National Guard weeks to quell. Bars will empty out with revelers into the downtown. Store windows will be smashed, cars overturned, ladies' virtues compromised. It's a giant baccha.n.a.lia the likes of which neither you nor the local news has never seen. Be sure to yell a slurred "number one" with an upheld finger into the camera. Bonus points if it's the middle finger. You'll want this moment recorded for posterity. One consolation if you were too cheap to score Super Bowl tickets is that you'll be around for the unruly riot that immediately follows your team's victory. Even if they lose, there will probably be a riot. If you live in Oakland, this new riot will adjoin the riot already in progress, to form an uber-riot that will take the National Guard weeks to quell. Bars will empty out with revelers into the downtown. Store windows will be smashed, cars overturned, ladies' virtues compromised. It's a giant baccha.n.a.lia the likes of which neither you nor the local news has never seen. Be sure to yell a slurred "number one" with an upheld finger into the camera. Bonus points if it's the middle finger. You'll want this moment recorded for posterity.Parade. By the time the riot quiets down, it'll be right about time for the victory parade. Hundreds of thousands will descend on the parade route for some huddled jubilation in the winter weather. Your sense of joyous disbelief will keep you warm. That and all the alcohol still overwhelming your blood. By the time the riot quiets down, it'll be right about time for the victory parade. Hundreds of thousands will descend on the parade route for some huddled jubilation in the winter weather. Your sense of joyous disbelief will keep you warm. That and all the alcohol still overwhelming your blood.Winners deserve the week off work/victory lap and victory nap. It's enough of a travesty that the day after the Super Bowl is not a national holiday. The working world just a.s.sumes hangovers are going to cure themselves. What's more, the fans of the two Super Bowl partic.i.p.ants need at least a week to recover from their team being in the game. So don't bother showing up for the next five days. If the boss has a problem with it, calmly explain upon your return that the job has your undivided attention for the next six months. At least when you're not gazing lovingly at the reflection in the mini Lombardi Trophy on your desk. It's enough of a travesty that the day after the Super Bowl is not a national holiday. The working world just a.s.sumes hangovers are going to cure themselves. What's more, the fans of the two Super Bowl partic.i.p.ants need at least a week to recover from their team being in the game. So don't bother showing up for the next five days. If the boss has a problem with it, calmly explain upon your return that the job has your undivided attention for the next six months. At least when you're not gazing lovingly at the reflection in the mini Lombardi Trophy on your desk.Merch! A champions.h.i.+p is the perfect excuse to splurge on all-new team-sponsored swag. Swaddle yourself in the spoils of your historic win. As the years go by and it fades further into the past, the t.i.tle will seem more and more bittersweet. Therefore it's important to savor the win as much as possible while it's fresh and unalloyed by failure. A champions.h.i.+p is the perfect excuse to splurge on all-new team-sponsored swag. Swaddle yourself in the spoils of your historic win. As the years go by and it fades further into the past, the t.i.tle will seem more and more bittersweet. Therefore it's important to savor the win as much as possible while it's fresh and unalloyed by failure.s.h.i.+t-talking becomes s.h.i.+t-gloating. What's the point of winning a t.i.tle if you can't be a d.i.c.k and rub it in everyone's face? That's almost a Buddhist koan. If a team wins a t.i.tle and no one shamelessly gloats about it, did it really happen? I submit that it did not. So get out there and make the world aware of your triumph. Get thee to message boards and inundate them with taunts. There's such a thing as a poor winner and you know because you're it. Great feeling, no? Look at those losers getting upset. Don't they wish they were in your shoes. What's the point of winning a t.i.tle if you can't be a d.i.c.k and rub it in everyone's face? That's almost a Buddhist koan. If a team wins a t.i.tle and no one shamelessly gloats about it, did it really happen? I submit that it did not. So get out there and make the world aware of your triumph. Get thee to message boards and inundate them with taunts. There's such a thing as a poor winner and you know because you're it. Great feeling, no? Look at those losers getting upset. Don't they wish they were in your shoes.Grace period? Not until after my three-peat! For a fan of the new world champions (and kindly guzzle meconium if you think it's wrong for Super Bowl winners to call themselves "world champions"), there are several issues to consider. How much of a pa.s.s should the coach and the quarterback get if they come out sucking the next year? How many years have to go by until you can get upset when they don't deliver another ring? ESPN's resident displaced Ma.s.shole Bill Simmons has argued that any champion should get a five-year grace period from its fans, that no matter what happens their followers aren't allowed to complain. Seems a mite bit generous, but being magnanimous is easy when winning is the norm. You'll find your patience wears thin in a hurry the first time a champion is crowned that isn't your team. Not until after my three-peat! For a fan of the new world champions (and kindly guzzle meconium if you think it's wrong for Super Bowl winners to call themselves "world champions"), there are several issues to consider. How much of a pa.s.s should the coach and the quarterback get if they come out sucking the next year? How many years have to go by until you can get upset when they don't deliver another ring? ESPN's resident displaced Ma.s.shole Bill Simmons has argued that any champion should get a five-year grace period from its fans, that no matter what happens their followers aren't allowed to complain. Seems a mite bit generous, but being magnanimous is easy when winning is the norm. You'll find your patience wears thin in a hurry the first time a champion is crowned that isn't your team.

With so much elation, you'd think there wouldn't be a possibility of the downside. Oh, how wrong you are. Stuck in blissful intoxication, you didn't happen to notice the mounting collection of douches surrounding you to watch your team's games. You never bothered to notice them before, but they arrived in greater and greater numbers as the team crept toward greatness. Now that they're there, there's no getting rid of them. Your worst fears have been confirmed: your world champions.h.i.+p team fan base has been overrun by bandwagon fans. Break out the flamethrower.

ARTICLE VIII.

Surviving the Endless Off-Season

VIII.1 Your End of the Year Denial Is So Strong You'll Actually Watch a Part of the Pro Bowl The dust has settled on the Super Bowl. The victory parade course has been traversed. The Super Bowl champion s.h.i.+rts premade for the team that lost have been s.h.i.+pped to Nicaragua. The Raiders have fired another coach. So concludes another glorious NFL season. This is when panic sets in. Seven whole months of football-less existence stares you dead in the face, like Shawne Merriman in mid-'roid rampage.

Being that it's the Al Davislike death rattle of the NFL season, you'd think you would quaff down every moment of the Pro Bowl as if it were Marisa Miller's bath water, making certain not to squander the final vestiges of the game you will very soon be bereft of. But have you ever tried to do it? You can't. Not possible. For even the most rock-ribbed of football fans can't bring themselves to sit through this entire perfunctory spectacle. And with good reason. It's about as unwatchable as the People's Choice Awards, a Uwe Boll movie, and anything starring Eva Longoria wrapped in a box of suck.

Don't get me wrong. Many fans will give the Pro Bowl a shot. They'll tune in for about an offensive drive or two, hoping to spot one of their favorite players in the game. After all, it's usually a high-scoring affair and, hey, all the premiere stars are involved. Except the dozen or so who opted not to play because they're nursing phantom injuries or getting a jump start on their s.e.x cruise through Asia. But that's it. You can't make it through any more than that. I challenge you to try. You'd fare better trying to keep a pack of Jets fans away from an exposed pair of t.i.ts.

The Pro Bowl is agonizing because it's so inconsequential. But that's no different from the all-star games in any other sport, even baseball with its pathetic attempt to inject significance into its All-Star Game by putting home field advantage in the World Series on the line. The NFL shows mercy (the league does not usually make a practice of this) by placing the Pro Bowl after the conclusion of the season. Why break up a riveting regular season with an empty exhibition smack dab in the middle, when no one wants to be part of it? Not that NFL players hate to be selected, mind you. They love the trip to Hawaii and the clause in their contract that triggers a huge pay day when they do get picked. It's the whole "exposing themselves to pointless injury" thing that possibly dampens their compet.i.tive fire for the PostSuper Bowl Cla.s.sic.

Take the cautionary tale of Robert Edwards. He rushed for 1,115 yards as a rookie for the New England Patriots in 1998. (Note to Patriots fans: this is three years before you realized the team existed.) After the season, the running back blew out his knee and nearly bled to death in an all-rookie flag football game played on the beach at Waikiki days before the Pro Bowl. Edwards didn't play in the league again for another three years, playing one more season in the NFL in 2002 with the Dolphins before spending the rest of his professional career in the CFL. Yes, the CFL, a fate even worse than the Bengals. They might as well have put him down. Taking that in mind, can you blame the players for being a little less than amped to expose themselves to cataclysmic injury, even at the end of the year? Of course you can. Being blindly and unctuously judgmental is the right of every fan. But it's still something to consider.

Really, the only time the Pro Bowl is even halfway relevant is two months before the game is actually played, that is, when the rosters are officially released. This announcement gives pundits and talking heads a solid week of "Who got snubbed?" grist for the horses.h.i.+t mill. Zealous homers get worked up over so-and-so not getting the nod and over which team got the most representatives. It's all eventually rendered pointless because, by the time the game rolls around, most of the players originally selected have pulled out and half the league ends up in Honolulu. Heck, play your cards right and you might even get an invite.

The Pro Bowl isn't without its draws. For one, you get to see the coaches of the teams that lost in conference t.i.tle games suffer the humiliation of halfheartedly leading a squad of stars into pointless battle. The axiom is that no one remembers the loser of the Super Bowl, but that's not necessarily true. There have been several memorable Super Bowl meltdowns, not the least of which was Bill Belichick storming off the field with a second left in Super Bowl XLII. You can see the deep sea of dejection in their eyes. In HD it's quite compelling.

Then there's the custom of the Pro Bowl quarterbacks paying the way for their entire offensive line to go to Hawaii along with them. A heartwarming gesture, to be sure, but just think what a squandered opportunity that is. Why not the entire cheerleading squad? With the number of QBs each conference carries for the Pro Bowl, there could be any many as seven or eight squads on the premises during the game. That would provide for an ample number of cutaway shots to make the telecast palatable for perverted minds.

Though it's a deeply flawed and eminently irrelevant tradition, the Pro Bowl is all that stands between you and full-on football withdrawal, which begins to kick in sometime around 1 p.m. the following Sunday, when you shatter the phalanges in your hand mas.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.tons on the remote control in search of a game, any game. Alas, there are none to be found. You, sir, abject victim of the linear nature of time, are tragically ensconced in the void of the off-season. May G.o.d have mercy on your soul.

VIII.2 Feign an Interest in Other Sports and Other People Learning to endure things you can't stand: it's one of the most vital skills any person can learn. And it's the only realistic shot the football fan has to outlast the gauntlet of unspeakable suffering that is the off-season. As smokers try to break the habit by turning to chewing gun, the football fan has to find wholly inadequate subst.i.tutes that only serve to remind how great football is. It's a bottomless stoma in the throat of suckage.

The temptation to turn inward and hibernate away this fallow period will be strong. But this is not a time to be alone. Seek the company of others. You'll have plenty of opportunities to shun them during football season. After all, companions.h.i.+p is a must when one feels bereft, mostly because they'll keep you from cutting yourself.

To be sure, it's a long slog, this off-season, a journey fraught with boredom, rife with sober thought, and sickeningly teeming with pointless conjecture about football with no action to refute or support it. A good time to get married, have children, do some work at the office. For the first few weeks, you will be haunted by the phantom pains of a Sunday without football, akin to what an amputee feels for a lost limb. Waking up hungover from a Sat.u.r.day night of hard-core liver poisoning, the grogginess becomes that much more uncomfortable and the Fatty Lumpkins waking up next to you that much uglier if football isn't fitting into the plans of the day.

Something then has to fill the void. Really, anything vaguely athletic and compet.i.tive will do. As flawed as all these alterna-sports can be, you'll just have to swallow them and find appealing aspects about their being. There's only so long you can watch replays of NFL games from the previous season before you're drooling half-naked on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor banging Starting Lineup figures into one another and making Chris Bermanlike spit-laden football onomatopoeias.

College Basketball-An oasis of thrilling compet.i.tion, an even better one now that Billy Packer is gone. Now the sport is just a few more d.i.c.k Vitale vocal ulcers away from challenging the NFL as a captivating sports spectacle. Well, at least during its champions.h.i.+p tournament.NBA-Unlike the NFL, basketball players are permitted to exhibit an iota of flair in their play. And even celebrate a little. Also, clubs have dance teams, which are a fine a.n.a.logue to cheerleaders.Hockey-There's fighting, for one. The empty seats allow you to kick your legs up. And Patriots fans will appreciate the preponderance of white players.Baseball-Um...hold on. I know I can think of something. Gimme a sec. Perhaps watching an inning can stir some sort of pleasant recollection. No. Nonono. Four straight pick-off attempts by the pitcher when up by four runs with a runner on first? Here we go: fans look less obnoxious wearing baseball caps featuring the logos of baseball teams than they do wearing the incongruous caps featuring an NFL logo. There. I think that counts as praise.

One of the knottier questions about watching other sports is how to divide your allegiances. Ideally, you would proceed with rooting for all the teams in the same city as your favorite football team, as well as those of the nearest university with a prominent athletic program. But what if it's a city that doesn't have representation in other, lesser sports? For example, Seattle no longer has an NBA team, Baltimore has no NHL franchise, and Green Bay is lucky to have an Applebee's as a distraction outside the Packers.

Being a bandwagon fan in a lesser sport is no more tolerable than one in the football world. In fact, anyone who pulls for the rare combination of YankeesLakers...o...b..ysUSC TrojansDuke Blue DevilsDetroit Red WingsManchester UnitedTiger Woods merits a flaming arrow in the r.e.c.t.u.m. Any two of that permutation ent.i.tles the banner chaser to a swift cattle prodding.

If you follow an NFL team located in a city where you don't live, adopting the other teams in that city prevents the unforgivable awkwardness that comes with explaining fact.i.tious rooting interests. Say that city lacks a franchise in a given sport. Then you have free rein to choose as you wish. Glomming onto the one located closest to your present residence is the cla.s.sy way to go, though if you move you must definitively drop one team before selecting another. No cross-pollination of fandom will do. It's very absolutist that way. College sports can be determined at a young age, with cheering preference being given to a parent's alma mater or to the college you end up attending. Either way, liking Notre Dame makes you a f.u.c.ktaster.

VIII.3 Oh, No! Your Favorite Player Left in Free Agency! Disown Him at Once!

That ungrateful c.o.c.ksnot! How dare he accept a more generous contract from another franchise, just because it was a longer term deal than the one your team offered, with more guaranteed money and a clause that ent.i.tles him to two c.o.ke-caked strippers for every touchdown reception. Does loyalty toward an organization that drafted him and would cut him as soon as his production slipped mean nothing? Apparently not. Try not to let the disillusionment harsh your buzz.

The start of the free agency period is the first of the off-season pseudo-events, during which there is no football action but instead granules of news that give obsessives cause to breathlessly speculate about the impact of these transactions on a season that is still practically a lifetime away. The free agency period typically begins the first week of March, and stays remotely interesting for about two weeks until all the players of even marginal consequence have been signed to ludicrously bloated deals and the Raiders have offered a six-year, $50 million contract to a line cook at a Mexican restaurant. The Redskins, too, will reach terms with a player four years past his prime, goading their fans to p.r.o.nounce the upcoming season yet another in which the Burgundy and Gold will stride effortlessly into Super Bowl lore-just like the past seventeen years.

Traditionalists contend that free agency robs fans of any emotional connection to their favorite team because the rate of turnover is so high that, with the exception of a few marquee players, the entire roster is usually overhauled every couple of years. With so few familiar faces, how could anyone really get attached to a team over the years? It's theory based in logic, but one that doesn't hold up well in the face of history, kind of like that communism thing. In the nearly two decades since the NFL inst.i.tuted unrestricted free agency, fandom hasn't gotten any less intense. For the most part, fans would like their favorite players to be sympathetic, fully formed personalities they feel like they can get to know over the years, but failing that, they're more than willing to settle for interchangeable stat machines.

You should have seen this coming, of course. Few free agent departures are a shock to those who keep close tabs on the business end of football. A team will make overtures to sign any player of value to a long-term extension long before his contract expires. If that offer isn't to the player's liking, there will commence a great deal of sulking and holding out and everything else Terrell Owens does twice a week.

So by the time the player does finally leave, the fans are well prepared for it, having watched the player's final embittered season with the team, during which he put up big stats but interacted with no one on the sidelines. Forewarning does not necessarily ease the sense of loss or betrayal. Coping with loss is always a struggle, even when it was a player you were kind of glad to see go, like DeAngelo Hall or Rex Grossman. Grief can work itself out in familiar patterns, and if you're prepared for them, it should really lessen the blow of losing favor for that athlete you never met.

VIII.3. A THE FIVE STAGES OF FREE AGENT DEJECTION.

1. Run the Player's Name Through the Mud on the Internet-Rant incessantly about what a clubhouse cancer the guy was and how the team is prepared to skyrocket to greatness without the burden of his negative presence. Lay out statistically tedious and unconvincing arguments against him that no one wants to hear. "Did you know his yard-per-catch average deceased 15 percent in 4 p.m. games played in the snow? An unmistakable sign that he's soft if there ever was one! That reserve taking his place so should've had his job years ago anyway. So what if he only had twelve catches in four seasons!? Those were big-time snags. You wouldn't know unless you watched the team on a regular basis!"

2. Burn the b.u.m's Jersey-The most destructive, and therefore more cathartic, of the stages. Be sure to get good video of that puppy going up in flames and get it on YouTube, preferably with a death metal track as an overlay. Nothing else quite adds that vital touch of ridiculously tortured melancholy.

3. Blame Drew Rosenhaus-Even if the departing player isn't one of his clients. Like you need an excuse to hate on that slimy bag of goat afterbirth. Just don't let him know. He feeds his young with your regurgitated contempt like a mother bird.

4. Accept It-and for G.o.d's Sake, Do Not Continue Liking the Traitor on His New Team-That means you, Brett Favre and Joe Montana fans. "But, but, he was real good for us for a long time! I'd follow him to the ends of the earth!! I can't turn my back on him now. In fact, I think I'll buy his jersey on the new team." "But, but, he was real good for us for a long time! I'd follow him to the ends of the earth!! I can't turn my back on him now. In fact, I think I'll buy his jersey on the new team." Die in a jersey bonfire. Team allegiance always supersedes your man-crush, unless you're part of his family. Even then it's dicey. Die in a jersey bonfire. Team allegiance always supersedes your man-crush, unless you're part of his family. Even then it's dicey.

5. Get Ready to Shout Hateful Epithets Like You've Never Shouted Hateful Epithets Before When the Player Returns to Play His Old, and Your Favorite, Team-You've been wronged and now's your chance for revenge. Boo that a.s.shole like the greedy s.l.u.t he is. Jeer him mercilessly for every mistake he commits, even to the point that you scare yourself. Maybe get some people in the crowd to help you tear apart an effigy of him. Eat a little of it for added effect. Nothing like the image of blood-thirsty mob violence to get in his head.

VIII.4 The Draft Is Excruciating, but in April You'll Take Anything You Can Get An oasis in the bleak nothingness of April in the sports calendar, MLB Opening Day and the Masters be d.a.m.ned, the NFL Draft provides a weekend of NFL pseudo-activity that you can breathlessly follow. There are those who dismiss the draft as nothing more than a bland recitation of names, and maybe it is, but it's a recitation of names you'll soon be hearing during football games and that's about the best sc.r.a.p you'll be thrown in the days of early spring.

Spread over two days, the draft really picks up steam after the seven-hour first round finally wraps up. It's also at that point that you'll find yourself completely in the dark about every player being taken. Not to worry, the NFL Draft drinking game is a time-honored tradition that will keep you entertained as grown men speak in glowing terms about the wonderful physical attributes of other grown men. A few wrinkles can be added any given year.

At the conclusion of the draft, in your supremely intoxicated state, you're all set to read through the draft grades a.s.signed to each team by any of the dozens of self-described draft experts in the media. Each attempt at grading, of course, is prefaced by the handy reminder that there's no way of knowing the true value of a draft cla.s.s for at least several years. If there's anything TV viewers want, it's an uninformed kneejerk reaction.

VIII.4. A THE NFL DRAFT DRINKING GAME.

Mel Kiper Jr. petulantly objects to a team's selection because it doesn't jibe with his draft board.-Take one sip. How dare those teams defy him? Don't they know how meticulously he puts that board together? And how many players' agents he cozies up with to do it?Chris Berman tips a pick to the television audience before it's announced by the commissioner.-Open every beer in the fridge and take the first sip out of the bottle. It's almost as obnoxious.Jets fans boo one of their team's picks.-Take one sip. This will happen exactly as many times as the Jets have picks. Drink twice if they boo one of the Patriots' picks. Down a keg if they cheer for something.A draftee cries or hugs the commissioner.-Pour one on the floor for his career.A team selects the "best player available."-It sounds redundant because surely teams should always be taking the best players, but this phrase is used to describe a team drafting a player who is the most talented rather than one who would fill a clear need on the roster.A mention that a draftee's stock rose because of his play at the Senior Bowl.-Take two sips. The stellar Senior Bowl performance is a surefire springboard for a guy who gets taken way too high. Stupid NFL teams, when will they learn?A draftee is filmed in the green room with friends and family.-One sip. Three if the player is being shown because he is falling down the draft order and now has a worried look on his face.An a.n.a.lyst says of a draftee, "I love this guy's [fill in the blank]."-One sip if that thing is the player's intensity. Four if it's his plus.h.i.+e fetish.Any of the following terms are used: "upside," "war room," "character issues," "motor," "reach," "need pick," "project," "intangibles," "combine."-One sip per use. Might need to keep a drink in each hand to keep up.A player is complimented for "finis.h.i.+ng plays."-Finish the drink in your hand.A draftee is spotted wearing a yellow, purple, orange, or electric blue suit.-Take one sip if the player is black. Shotgun three beers if the player is white.Each time Ed Werder reports from Dallas.-Make a manly beer mustache on your face. A goatee if Jason Witten feeds him slander about a teammate.A team lets its allotted time expire.-Drink an entire beer. If it's your team, drink a bucket of varnish. It's only happened a few times, most infamously in 2003 when the Vikings allowed the time to expire on the number seven pick of the draft, after which two teams rushed to pick in front of them. The Vikings fell to the ninth overall selection.A mention of Tom Brady being the 199th player selected in the 2000 draft.-Take one sip. This will keep you going in the later rounds as pundits look for examples of second-day steals. This will invariably be the first one mentioned. And the first one repeated another ten times.A player from the Ivy League is drafted.-Chug a bottle of 1943 vintage Chateau Latour. TV a.n.a.lysts, especially Chris Berman (he only occasionally makes mention of his years at Brown), adore it when one of the downtrodden denizens of the Ivy League gets a chance to s.h.i.+ne in the NFL. Because those beleaguered souls never really get a fair shake in the world, do they?The Lions select a receiver in the first round.-Take three sips. Sure, the Matt Millen era in Detroit has thankfully been swept into the dustbin of history (even if he returned to the broadcast table at NBC somehow). But that doesn't mean his successors aren't capable of repeating his mistakes. For the purposes of our enjoyment, let's hope they do.A punter or a kicker is drafted.-Everyone knows you don't need to draft a kicker or a punter, not when any number of adequate ones will be available on the free agent market. Take two drinks if the punter drafted won the Ray Guy Award in college. Take three drinks if the pick is in the third round or higher. Then call your friend the Raiders fan to laugh at him.The telecast cuts away to commercial on the second day of the draft before you have a chance to read your team's selections on the scroll.-Throw a bottle at the screen.A montage of Mr. Irrelevants.-Drink whatever you got left. Looks like the draft is coming to a close. Mr. Irrelevant, the name attached to the final player selected in the draft because this player seldom even makes the team's final roster, has to be paraded around and embarra.s.sed for not being a prized prospect. Still, it's better than not being taken at all. Those players are likely to be joining you on the couch, forty-ounce in hand, in a few months, if they're not being used as tackling dummies for a team's starters.

VIII.5 The Arena League and the CFL Are a Sickening Farce and Not Even the Good Kind of Sickening Farce While nowhere near the embarra.s.sment that was Vince McMahon's XFL-at the top of its litany of ills during its one-year existence was the resurrection of Tommy Maddox's career-the Arena Football League is an ongoing (well, maybe not) putrid blight upon the sporting landscape and, worse still, is responsible for Kurt Warner's emergence as an NFL signal caller. Russell Athletic ESPN Arena Football, as the longwinded official name of its broadcast goes, isn't so odious because arena football is any less watchable than baseball, hockey, or any of those other piddling games for p.u.s.s.ybaskets. No, since Arena Football bears a tenuous similarity to the glorious game that gives us a good dose of nons.e.xual wood, its continued presence insults the NFL. At least its disparity in skill level does.

This is a league that features padded sidelines, rebound nets that the ball can bounce off of and still be in play, a four-point dropkick field goal, and players who are a dropped pa.s.s away from bagging groceries or, if they're lucky, playing a guy bagging groceries in a p.o.r.n flick. It's no wonder that the league had to cancel its season this year due to economic woes.

Meanwhile, the minor league version of the Arena League is called af2, or arenafootball2, which is spelled out like a r.e.t.a.r.ded teenager's message board commenter name. This is a league that boasts teams named the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz, Quad City Steamwheelers (were the Quad City DJs too obvious a reference?), the Tri-Cities Fever (which, to its credit, does sound like a virulent strain of taint itch), and the Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings (which are very good in mambo sauce, I hear). This couldn't be any more of a Mickey Mouse operation if the league had advertis.e.m.e.nts on its sidelines. Oh, wait, it does. Mitsubis.h.i.+ has the naming rights to all the league's divisions, for marketing out loud! The funniest aspect of the Arena League shuttering for a season is that its independently run development league is continuing as planned. So, if you can't do without the palpable charge that comes from watching a glorified subst.i.tute for indoor soccer, treat yourself to the players who couldn't even qualify for that.

In the glaring absence of the indoor Nerfball league that is constantly plugged by ESPN (not surprising, considering the network's partial owners.h.i.+p stake in it), the all-too friendly Canucks will be glad to offer you a summertime dose of their b.a.s.t.a.r.dized version of the One True Sport. As one might expect, Canada makes a complete hash of it, giving you a joke of a league that has 110-yard playing fields and twelve players on each side going through three-down possessions. What's more, there are quotas in place to guarantee that each team maintains a certain minimum of Canadian players. Meaning there is a defined ceiling for how good any CFL team can be before it gets weighed down by the suckage of homegrown players unfit for local munic.i.p.al hockey leagues.

Granted, the CFL has helped develop a handful of talented players and coaches for its immeasurably superior American counterpart, the most notable among them being Warren Moon, Doug Flutie, Marv Levy, and Joe Theismann. Nevertheless, any league that awards a point for a missed field goal or a punt out of the back of the opponent's end zone is possessed of a uselessness on par with Matt Leinart.

The latest emergent alternative for that football dollar is the United Football League, which is all but destined to fail like the USFL before it, even if Roger Goodell said he envisions the UFL eventually becoming a development league for the NFL. The league is officially scheduled to begin play in 2010, with an abbreviated inaugural season set for this fall, thus ensuring it gets buried behind the avalanche of NFL action. In a minor coup, the league has tapped former NFL coaches Dennis Green, Jim Haslett, and Jim Fa.s.sel, as well as former defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell, to helm its four teams. Undoubtedly, nothing stirs the ma.s.ses like inferior talent led by once notable head coaches who've all squandered their fifth chance at success.

Fans would love nothing more than having the possibility of year-round football, but not at the price of a game with an over/under of 700 points and a quality of play even lower than a Week 17 Chiefs-Rams tilt (but without the added entertainment of recalcitrant players taking plays off and openly flouting coaches). In the end, the worst of the NFL far outstrips even the height of what the Arena League and the CFL have to offer. Let's not kid ourselves with these cheap imitations. As everybody knows, an arena is for Judas Priest concerts, a stadium is for football. And Canada is for the poutine-stained denim jacket-and-jeans combo. We should keep it that way.

VIII.6 Beware the PostNBA Finals Misery Vortex Of the desolate voids that typify the unG.o.dly horror that is the off-season, none is worse than the month that lurches from the end of the NBA Finals in mid-June until the NFL teams report to training camp in the third week of July. There you will find nothingness. Then more nothingness. Then some sunny nothingness. Then some G.o.dd.a.m.n baseball, followed soon after by another unbroken stretch of nil.

Sure, postSuper Bowl February is plenty dreadful, but at least the buzz from the recently concluded season hasn't entirely subsided. Plus there are still coaches and GMs being hired and fired, which is a delight in and of itself. And, hey, March Madness is right around the corner, which is actually kinda-sorta fun for the first two rounds, until you lose your office pool to a girl who picks the Final Four based on where she applied to grad school. In the following months you get a little caught up with playoff hockey and basketball. You even go to MLB Opening Day and decide it's a little charming, but still don't watch more than three innings of baseball until September.

By then, the thought that you might just tough out this off-season is winning out. That is, until you hit the early summer wall and are staring down the biggest lacuna in the sports calendar. NFL news, if there's any at all, is scant. The only G.o.dd.a.m.n sport to watch is baseball. Summer movies are out but two-thirds of them are p.i.s.s-poor comic book adaptations and a.s.sorted retreads.

The best you can hope for is a scandal on the scale of the Michael Vick fiasco to crop up, but those only come along once every so often. Granted, there's typically one decent scandal per off-season, but that was a particularly good one. When they're bad, they're Favre-speculation-about-unretiring bad.

Every football fan struggles during this stretch, but it's inc.u.mbent upon you to forge through the abyss with your sanity intact. Heading to the beach for several weeks and getting really blotto will not only help the time fly by but will give you the rare exposure to the sun that you're usually robbed of by spending months in a bar. Conserving your vacation time so you can attend training camp? Throw yourself into your work. The sudden uptick in production may offset the dozens of days you took off because you were hungover the year before.

Enough time goes by and, then, one magnificent morn, you switch on your television and, hark, what delightful sound strikes your ear? News of a holdout? JaMarcus Russell won't be reporting to camp next week because of a contract dispute. Truly this marks the first sign of a re-birth, of a season starting anew.

Yes.

It begins!

8.7 Training Camp Is Miserable for the Athlete, Only Kind of Boring for You Without exception, NFL players loathe training camp. For them it's an endless procession of rote drills and grueling two-a-days cruelly imposed by taskmaster coaches. It's where players who report 30 pounds overweight from the off-season bust their a.s.ses for a few weeks only to possibly not even make final cut. As Redskins tight end/H-back Chris Cooley put it so eloquently in a post on the toweringly s.e.xy football humor blog Kissing Suzy Kolber: The one cool thing about the first month of camp is living in a dorm room. I love it when I get to leave my 2.8 million dollar house and live in a 400 square foot box, trade in the Mercedes for the bus, and curl up in my twin bed. The TV's are great too, who isn't happy when they pick up 10 total channels on a 24 inch box? Yeah, I guess now people can say what a ungrateful b.a.s.t.a.r.d I am and how much anyone would give to play pro football, but please, whether it's a high school or NFL training camp, it's still gonna be as fun as a bag of d.i.c.ks.

This unmitigated suffering is one reason why training camp should be appealing to the fan. Seeing incredibly wealthy people shunted into meager living conditions and put through the wringer in any other context would be a wonderful concept for a reality show, one that you would gladly tune into each and every week. And certainly more tolerable than the ones Michael Irvin and T.O. have. That the millionaires in question are physically able to handle the rigors should only diminish the allure slightly.

Into the whole awkward adulation thing? There's plenty of that too. Take the opportunity to shake players' hands and exchange a few lines of stilted conversation. Well, at least that's how it was back in the era when every team held camps open to the public. Nowadays, fewer than half the teams in the league hold training camps that are publicly accessible. Most have repaired to the antiseptic confines of team facilities, where coaches can berate players and run all the obscure situational bulls.h.i.+t they'll never use in the regular season in complete seclusion. Which means you just know they're all having c.o.ke-and-hookers parties after every practice. Quit hogging it all for yourself, NFL teams.

For all the tedium, there are still some folksy charming sights at training camp. For one, there are the players you know have no shot at making the roster. Look at them toil futilely. Let them know in advance how you'd like your groceries bagged and on which side of the doorstep to leave your FedEx deliveries. They'll appreciate the heads-up.

Then there are moments of Norman Rockwelllike Americana that infuse the experience with something other than the corporate culture that has come to pervade the NFL experience at every level. The Packers, for example, have players who ride children's bikes pre-and post-practice with the kids riding on the handlebars. All right, that's really the last vestige of hands-on down-home whimsy to be found at any of these glorified practices. Still, by the outset of summer, you've undergone what's already been a six-month separation from your favorite team. By now, you'd sit in ninety-five degree heat just to watch them stand around and text their friends.

VIII.8 Observe Madden Madden Day Like the National Holiday It Should Be Day Like the National Holiday It Should Be For the past twenty-plus years, video game publisher Electronic Arts Tiburon has brought gamers and football fans (these two categories have a bit of overlap) the premier console football simulator on the market. Of course, ever since EA was granted the exclusive NFL license in 2004, it's the only one on the market, but y'know, details, details. What do you need compet.i.tion for? Granting monopolies to large corporations is what America does best.

The game is named for the Hall of Fame coach and occasionally coherent grumbling recently retired broadcaster John Madden, who, in a way, is to video games what George Foreman is to electric grills: a sports celebrity who haphazardly picked something to which to attach his name. However, beginning last year, Madden stopped recording play-by-play audio for the game, thus reducing the number of times you'll hear "Boom!" during game play by roughly 100 percent. He was replaced by the duo of Tom Hammond and Cris Collinsworth, who have the collective personality of a Tim Robbins beer fart.

Each August, a teeming unwashed horde of single guys in authentic Mitch.e.l.l & Ness jerseys queue up by the hundreds at the local Gamestop the night of the release to drop sixty dollars on a game that is little more than the previous year's edition plus a roster update and a few new player animations. Yeah, I know. I love it too.

It's a joyous occasion for no other reason than that it's another signal, along with the arrival of training camp and the preseason, that the blessed NFL regular season is drawing near. When you've had to endure nothing but months of baseball, you'll lap up anything resembling football like it's mother's milk. What's more, you can play through an entire season with your favorite team before the actual season begins. You can tell yourself it's your way of scouting the compet.i.tion. Did you get the Eagles to finish 19-0 and win the Super Bowl 493? On the easiest difficulty setting? Well, surely that's how it's going to shake out in real life.

Unfortunately for we socially deficient freaks, this release falls on a Tuesday, smack in the middle of a work week. Just as the government denies fans a vacation day after the Super Bowl, our rights are trampled on with the refusal of time off for Madden Madden Day. Now the drill goes: you get the game at midnight, only so you can go back home and hit the sack before work the next day? Maybe at best you can fit in a game or two, but that's it. Oh, nononono, my friends. That be some bulls.h.i.+t. Not only have you waited through a seemingly endless off-season, but also a couple hours of standing around in a sausage-fest in order to get this game, and now you can't even play it? If you're going to go to that much effort to procure Day. Now the drill goes: you get the game at midnight, only so you can go back home and hit the sack before work the next day? Maybe at best you can fit in a game or two, but that's it. Oh, nononono, my friends. That be some bulls.h.i.+t. Not only have you waited through a seemingly endless off-season, but also a couple hours of standing around in a sausage-fest in order to get this game, and now you can't even play it? If you're going to go to that much effort to procure Madden, Madden, you need to have a you need to have a Madden Madden Day Plan in place. Day Plan in place.

Because Madden Madden sells approximately eleventy-seven trillion copies a year, many employers have now cottoned onto the fact that a metric s.h.i.+tload of people attempt to take off the day the game comes out and have implemented policies forbidding workers from using vacation on that date. Why? Because they're rank a.s.sholes and a.s.sholes love nothing more than throwing around whatever meager power they have at their disposal. If you happen to be one of those supervisor humps, congrats. You can take the day off and leave the outraged underlings to choke on your hypocrisy. That was easy, huh? sells approximately eleventy-seven trillion copies a year, many employers have now cottoned onto the fact that a metric s.h.i.+tload of people attempt to take off the day the game comes out and have implemented policies forbidding workers from using vacation on that date. Why? Because they're rank a.s.sholes and a.s.sholes love nothing more than throwing around whatever meager power they have at their disposal. If you happen to be one of those supervisor humps, congrats. You can take the day off and leave the outraged underlings to choke on your hypocrisy. That was easy, huh?

For the rest of us, there are a number of options available. The simplest solution, of course, is to quit your job. Sure, slogging through med school was arduous and extremely expensive, but not letting you take a day off to play a video game just because you have a surgery scheduled is a crock. Besides, as a surgeon you're already predisposed with the precise hand-eye coordination necessary to excel at Madden. Madden. All that remains is the capacity to yell soph.o.m.oric insults over a headset. All that remains is the capacity to yell soph.o.m.oric insults over a headset.

Having some foresight can be to your benefit. It's probably unlikely that a relative will have the courtesy to die around the release of Madden Madden, which would give you an easy out. However, if one should pa.s.s away earlier in the year, say around April, prevail upon your family to consider the merits of a summer burial. The soil is less barren and there are more bugs to expediate decomposition. Stick the corpse on ice for a few months and convince the relatives it's a farewell tour.

Whatever you do, don't try to feign an illness. Most bosses reflexively won't buy it, whether you're actually sick or not, and will demand some sort of doctor's note, and depending on your financial situation, a doctor's visit might be a lot to sacrifice for a single day of gaming. Contracting a really serious illness in advance to seal the deal is an extra step worthy of admiration and a surefire way to score some playing time. The nurses can probably rig the game up on your hospital TV. If you can time your eventual pa.s.sing with the clinching of a Super Bowl victory, you can go out a champion, and perhaps bequeath your screen name to a close relative. That is, until the coroner overwrites the file on your memory card hours later with an 8-8 season with the Chiefs. What a d.i.c.k.

One thing to keep in mind once you fabricate an excuse valid-sounding enough to get the day off is that you shouldn't load any Madden Madden highlights you may have that day onto YouTube, not only because it's an asinine practice in general, but because the time stamp on the videos will give away your ruse. Ridiculous as it sounds, you'd be surprised how Internet savvy employers have become. Also, learning the profile name of the boss's kid beforehand is a must. The last thing you want is to be playing some thirteen-year-old on Xbox Live and let it slip that you're skipping work from your teller job at the bank just for the kid to recognize your name from one of his dad's endless rants about work. highlights you may have that day onto YouTube, not only because it's an asinine practice in general, but because the time stamp on the videos will give away your ruse. Ridiculous as it sounds, you'd be surprised how Internet savvy employers have become. Also, learning the profile name of the boss's kid beforehand is a must. The last thing you want is to be playing some thirteen-year-old on Xbox Live and let it slip that you're skipping work from your teller job at the bank just for the kid to recognize your name from one of his dad's endless rants about work.

No matter how you go about securing yourself some glorious playing time with Madden Madden, keep in mind that if you ever play the game using any team other than the one you root for in real life, you're a gutless traitor fit for castration by a scythe. I don't care if the Saints do only have a 75 rating in the game. If you play with the Patriots, even to beat a clearly superior opponent, you've lowered yourself to such an extent that even the most cogent of excuses cannot explain away your fanhood cowardice. Unless you have money on the game. That's something anyone can understand.

VIII.9 Dupe Yourself into Thinking the Preseason Matters It's a well-known but somehow little-acknowledged fact that the NFL preseason is an empty spectacle possessed of a meaninglessness that exists only on par with award shows and philosophy cla.s.ses. However, after six agonizing months of football deprivation you'd stick your d.i.c.k in a hornet's nest to get anything resembling the game you so sickeningly crave. And NFL teams know that. That's why it's a perfect opportunity for them to fleece fans with exorbitant prices for what amounts to maybe a quarter of actual football (if that).

In the best of circ.u.mstances, preseason games are where closely contested arcane position battles are settled (the battle for third-string tight end is on!). It's also where a team decides whether or not to carry a fourth safety or a seventh linebacker on the final roster. Truly riveting stuff, I know. For everyone on the field whose job isn't on the line, it's a tedious dress rehearsal where coaches try not to reveal too much of their playbook and the main goal for players is not to get hurt. Donovan McNabb, especially, likes to save his injuries for the regular season.

But knowing it means nothing to the players themselves, how then can the preseason be more exciting for you? Yes, there's beer. And whiskey. And tequila. And vodka. And paint thinner. All these intoxicants will be necessary in surviving this stolid ordeal. Just remind yourself that consequential football is drawing near. Drawing from your powers of extreme self-delusion, you'll make it through this thing yet. Delude yourself enough and you might even learn to enjoy it in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way. Because, after all, in preseason games either team's starters play anywhere between one drive and little over one half of the game. That's a lot of empty time to fill with guys who are getting cut in a week. Your psychosis might as well pick up the slack.

Watching at home, this is no biggie. You could simply change the channel. Then again, it's the summer, so nothing is on except baseball and second-rate shows networks haul out for the dry months. But that's irrelevant. You're a real fan, one of the true believers who forked over fifty dollars (plus fifteen for parking) to see your favorite team take the field in a meaningless scrimmage. Because your season ticket package required you to. That expense has to be justified. Here's where the self-delusion comes in handy.

As with any destructive habit, you must give yourself to it completely. In many ways, like the players, you too should approach the preseason as a dress rehearsal. Except, unlike those players, you should care. A lot. Like Ron Paul supporters a lot. Whipping yourself into a frenzy for the regular season isn't a switch you can just flip on and off. Weeks of building up alcohol tolerance and ascertaining the best routes for eluding security will give you an edge many lesser fans will lack, thus landing them either pa.s.sed out or in jail.

H