I preface this post with “not all men have an exuberant passion for football and likewise not all women are filled with hate (I hope). Also while the world calls it football Americans love to call it soccer. Therefore the sport in question is American Football. Let’s get this moving, shall we?
I found this little gem on one of the social networks I am subscribed to
“Men who have a thirty-six-televised-football-games-a- week-habit should be declared legally dead and their estates probated.” – Erma Bombeck
Some of you might be curious to find out who this person is and for you, read more about Erma Bombeck here. This same lady had another quote
“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” – Erma Bombeck
A football game runs about 3 hours on the tele and this means that in scenario #1 a man would have to spend 108 hours a week (this works out to about 15.42 hours a day!) on watching football. In scenario #2, he would spend 9 hours in a row.
Work done by Adweek/Harris Poll shows 64% of American watch NFL
almost two-thirds of U.S. adults say they currently watch NFL football (64%), including almost three-quarters of men (73%) and over half of women (55%).
Also, from Statistia,
As you can see the majority of folks polled watch only about 5 hours of less per week. The highest allocation of hours is 16 hours per week or more.
This is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO the 15.42 hours A DAY that Erma Bombeck and her legion swear by!
Then there is the question of 3 games at a stretch (9 hours). While I have no hard stats on this, a quick look at the NFL playoff schedule for 2012 (post season) shows one game a day. I will concede that there might be at most 2 games a day. But to state 3 games a day? Come on ladies, let’s be fair now.
Now maybe the reason why women hate this is because they don’t have a “female only” mainstream sport they can get behind. Maybe just as the other camp suspect, they just can’t seem to understand why and how men can have fun without involving them. I have no idea. Whatever the case, you don’t see men complaining that women spend their productive time watching episodes of “Desperate Housewives”, “Real Housewives of [Insert Location], “Teen Moms” and other worthless junk. Which leads me to New Rule
NEWRULE: Ladies, if you want to get all worked up about guys watching football you’ll need to accept that men can get all worked up about you watching reality TV shows like “Desperate Housewives”, “Dr. Phil”, yes and even Oprah! You see, one is about a set of people getting dressed up to systematically take down others, also often in a cohesive fashion, using sanity-pondering tactics. It’s also about questioning some of the most ridiculous decisions one, as a human, could make…And then there’s football.
In other words, “Ladies, leave us the fuck alone”!
Mr. Faux Pas 