(American) Football

Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t required to be overweight and goateed to be a fan of football. In fact, the rise of fantasy football has attracted quite a few nerds to the sport. Even though Sundays at a sports bar are full of the typical chicken wing sauce covered stereotype, nerds will follow the game. Some of them now even have jobs within the sports media studying numbers. They’re once again doing the jock’s homework. Sit in on an engineering lecture and look for the guy in the oversized football jersey. Now those fantasy football junkies may not be the same people embracing nerd chic but it’s a start. Now that you’re ready to break the mold of the football fan, lets start watching.

The second thing you’ll notice about football (after the trendy tight pants) is that there is a stoppage after every play. Critics of the game will say this makes the game too boring. Not the enlightened hipster, though. The breaks between plays make it a chess match. Always compare sports to chess. It’s the quickest way to prove your intellect to the person you’re talking to.

Another way to prove that your IQ is smarter than someone with ten concussions is to make fun of the announcers. Most football games have a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. The play-by-play announcer is capable of saying what he sees while it happens and the color commentator is usually a football player with the minimal ability of speech. There are two ways to go about making fun of commentators. Malicious comments about the garbage spewing into your ears, or fat jokes since they always seem to keep the same diet after the two a days end. The other option is to feign compassion for all the head injuries. Comments like, “it’s nice to see_____ still alive,” or “at least he’s doing better than most former boxers,” are all you need. One thing to be aware of is that the closest thing the NFL has come to having an intelligent commentator was Dennis Miller. Luckily he left to go back to Fox News with the rest of the brains of the country.

Football knowledge can even help you out with your overly PC friend. Next time ze (none-gender specific, super PC) is talking trash about Teddy Roosevelt, PC friends love to do this, mention that he saved countless lives by encouraging football to adopt the forward pass.

All that’s left to do now is refer to the sport as “American football.” This will eliminate any confusion when talking to your friends that call soccer football.