Why Grown Men Walk Around Wearing Football Jerseys

....I have a jersey I wear when my team plays on Sundays. It's not a good jersey. It's a lame-ass replica jersey I bought because I was too cheap to spring for the real deal. But I wear it. And do I feel like a stallion when I wear it? I DO. I totally do, even though I look like every other middle-aged man wearing an NFL jersey he shouldn't be wearing. I feel like I'm part of the team, which is just absurd.

NFL fans walk around in team jerseys all the time, and even though most of them look like schlubs, most of them FEEL better than they do at any other time of the week. In fact, the fatter and more out of shape you are, the more powerful a spell the jersey casts over your ego. Maybe you look like a real player. Maybe the head coach will be in dire need of a running back in the fourth quarter, see you through the TV screen, and summon you out to the field to go rip off the winning 90-yard swing pass. That will never happen, but the jersey is what lets you dream about it, and often the dream is vivid enough to make a decent substitute for reality. Which is good, because in reality you're fat and your team sucks.

So if you have a jersey sitting in your drawer, I beseech you to take it out right now and throw it on. Don't apologize for it. Don't worry about your girlfriend telling you that you look pathetic. She doesn't get it, man. She doesn't understand the POWER of the jersey. But you do. You put that jersey on and you get yourself fired the f**k up, because the NFL season starts TONIGHT....

I am a fan, I love NFL football. Have been since I watched my first football game ever back in 1971 where Dick Butkus, in the twilight of his career, scored a critical extra point after a touchdown. I had never watched a football game, and my family had just moved back to the states after spending a good part of the Sixties overseas (Navy family)

I watched that game on a little black and white television, and I was hooked.

Now, the people I hang around with are all fans. They do serious (and I mean serious) tailgating. They have all been season tickets for nearly two decades now, even though some have left and others have come in. I couldn't afford a full season ticket, so I got a part of one...hence my nickname "Part Time".

When you get accepted as a member of the group they assign you a nickname. They watch you for a few games as a guest to make sure you aren't an idiot who will get all their tickets yanked because you are an abusive drunk...so you hope you get a GOOD nickname, not something like "Stinky" or whatever. We all have jersies with our assigned nicknames on the backs...Part Time, Half Time, Steak Tip, Bad Back, Rooster, Bobbin' Head Doll Guy, The Commissioner, etc.

They are good folks, normal and mostly well behaved, and a huge amount of fun to be around. We jump, yell, laugh, scream, cook, drink and eat, though not always in that order.

We enjoy the game, the pageantry, the fun. It lets us have a day where we can all hang out together and have a great time. We aren't living vicariously through someone else, it just gives us a framework in which to have a good time.

We have traveled to various destinations to watch games, particularly Buffalo, which has a great NFL fan base. Good fans, been there many times and the worst that ever happened was to have a beer land on us from an upper deck.

Here we are in a blizzard in Buffalo with the crazy people in a blizzard...the stadium was nearly completely deserted within a half hour of the game ending:

And we saw this guy in the bathroom at a game:

And these were a bunch of strangers, Buffalo fans who didn't really care that we were wearing our team jerseys, but were having a great time:

This is me with my best friend, who went into the Navy with me years ago...could we look any more ridiculous? Who gives a rat's patootie...the question should be, could we have any more fun?

It is a ball. But we have families, jobs (at least most of us, now) hobbies, any number of things that matter as much or more than football. Just because we love doing this doesn't mean we cannot devote energy to other things in life that are important. This is just fun.

It is all about having fun. I don't tell others what to do to enjoy themselves. That is their business. I can shrug my shoulders with a smile and say "Good for you! Your passion about something doesn't do anything for me, but your life doesn't revolve around my opinions and I know that, so...good on ya!"

Glad you liked them, mojito. Bottom line: It is all in fun and for fun.

The post earlier in the thread that stated he couldn't enjoy sports after 9/11 just saddened me reading it. There are a lot of people that feel just that way, and it makes me even angrier at those responsible for that day.

Even though I understand and know exactly how he feels, I am just not ready myself to go down that road for the rest of my life.

If those evil bastards are going to beat me, they are going to have to do it some other way.

I plan to enjoy myself just because I know it pisses them off that I am enjoying myself. I have always disliked H.L. Menken and what he stood for, but he had one quote in particular I have always liked: ""Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

I would update this quote to say: "Radical Islam - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

We all fight back in our own way.

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