Chapter 5. A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

by Bob Andelman

"During the late 1940s and early '50s, I peddled my bicycle 20 miles in each direction two or three times a week to watch the Los Angeles Rams practice in training camp. I was able to meet a lot of players. I wasn't an autograph seeker, though. I just liked to watch them practice, hear the grunts and groans, the hits. I'd try to do what they did. I grew up without a father around (his father died in World War II) so I had to pick that up alone and be successful at it."

Jim Runels
Retired management executive
Yorba Linda, California

As boys, we're drawn to athletes who embody all we strive to be: cunning, fast, aggressive, agile, handsome, witty, attractive to women. Guys like Johnny Unitas, Mean Joe Greene, Joe Namath, O.J. Simpson and Dan Marino never age in the eyes of idolizing youngsters. The image of the stars as hearty, full-of-life players cements in the eyes of young men, no matter how many hairs on Namath's head turn grey.

It's a different experience for grown men. Our boyhood heroes retire and fade from the game before we reach our assigned cubicles in the work place and we don't become as attached to their replacements.

Even worse, one day we wake up and they're all younger than us.

And thanks to free agency, the guy we rooted for last year joins our arch-rival for the coming season. Or our quarterback becomes more interested in chasing big bucks in greener pastures and endorsing roll-on, non-stick deodorant than leading us to victory. We blanche at his annual demand to be paid 10 times what we'll earn in a lifetime rather than just double. Or the team's general manager sours on our favorite wide receiver and trades him without warning.

Chicago sports radio personality Mike North grew up in the aura of Bears legends Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, an era when star players mated with a team for life. He worries about the ties between a new generation of players and fans.

"It's hard to be a fan of individuals with free agency," he says. "Players used to be 'your guys.' They're no longer your guys."

Adults learn to pick their heroes more carefully than children and grudgingly realize most heroes will be short-lived. But we still indulge that boyish need to worship the gods.

Contemporary men are desperately searching for heroes in their lives. We're wanting for role models at a time when the ranks of positive male role models are fairly thin. So many athletes undeserving of our loyalty have been glorified by the press and glorified by Madison Avenue. Every little kid wants to be like Mike. Everybody wants to have their face on the Wheaties box and go to Disneyland after the big game.

Men search for an identification with a winner, a male figure who is effective, virile, potent and capable and knows how to get things done. All of the hype that goes into sports serves some need where men come up empty.

"Everybody has somebody that they look up to as a model. That personal attachment says, 'I would like to be like them,' " says Dr. Thomas A. Tutko, a clinical psychologist at San Jose State University and a director of the Institute of Athletic Motivation. "I went to a real estate office and hanging behind this guy's desk -- a very, very successful guy -- was a huge print of Joe Montana. Heroes provide hope. They provide identity. They provide an opportunity to be a step above and beyond where you are right now. It is people like Montana that give us that hope. Personally, I grew up worshipping Lou Gehrig. The 'Iron Man.' He was, to me, the greatest single athlete that existed. I loved baseball. Lou Gehrig was part Hungarian and I was part Hungarian. There were all those bizarre reasons. I identified not just with him but the traits that he represented."

Isolating a hero on a team is also good for what ails fans of lousy teams. You want to stick by your guys through thick and thin, but it sure helps if one of them stands tall even in darkest night.

* * *

Some of us eschew individuals for teams.

Palmiro "Paul" Mazzoleni came by his devotion to the Green Bay Packers when his family moved to the west side of Green Bay. Five or six players lived in the neighborhood, often inviting Mazzoleni to watch them practice. That's how, years later, he met and became acquainted with Vince Lombardi in 1959. And it helped his service station became a favorite place for Packers players and staff to fuel up.

"In those days, the Packers weren't paid until the first game of the season," Mazzoleni, now in his 80s, recalls. "I carried a lot of those guys on the books. They all remembered those days -- Bart Starr, Paul Hornung -- when old Paul carried them."

Mazzoleni's service station ("Get your gasolini from Paul Mazzoleni, who sells the best gasolini" was his radio jingle for years) stands as much a part of local football legend in Green Bay as any Bart Starr pass. That came to pass for three reasons: No. 1, Mazzoleni didn't allow anyone to say a discouraging word at his place about the Packers; No. 2, Mazz always knew where a fella could get a ticket to the game (he once redistributed 87 to a single game); and No. 3, Martha's Coffee Club.

"I always said I never wanted to hear anything negative," Mazzoleni says. "To this day, I always say, 'Rome wasn't built in a day.' I never let anybody run down the Packers. Even when Tony Mandarich was here and all the sportswriters wrote that he was a bust, I said, 'Give him a chance.'"

Martha's Coffee Club began early in the Lombardi regime and continues to this day. It took its name from Martha's, the restaurant at 515 S. Broadway, a few steps down from Paul's Standard Service (now Tom's Marathon) at 505 S. Broadway. The club meets every Monday morning at 9 a.m. for half an hour to dish dirt on the team. Everyone must be ready with a new Packer rumor. There are other strictly enforced rules as well: any member who talks business has to put 10 cents in a cup; if you take a call during a meeting, it's 50 cents.

"They're the finest Monday Morning Quarterbacks in town," Mazzoleni brags. "When the Packers don't do well, they don't run them down.

* * *

Most NFL and college towns sport at least one person everyone knows as the team's biggest fan. In Green Bay, it's Paul Mazzoleni. In Gainesville, the University of Florida Gators have "Mr. Two-Bits" ("Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits a dollar! All for the Gators, stand up and holler!"). And in Detroit, the Lions, Tigers, Redwings, Pistons and Drive all share "The Brow."

When 30 years as a mathematics teacher didn't utterly exhaust Joe Diroff, he traded in his chalk and erasers to be Detroit's best-known sports fan.

"When I retired in 1980, I thought I'd hit the rocking chair, maybe play golf, go fishing," he says. "I tried it all; I wasn't good at any of 'em. I said to myself, two years after retiring, there's only one individual in the universe who has all the answers. I said, 'God, tell me what talent I have.'

"The next night, I was at Cobo Hall in Detroit. The Pistons were playing the Boston Celtics. The one talent God gave me was a big mouth. I can really yell. I was asked to come out on the main court and give a cheer. At the end of it, I jumped up in the air. Well, I always have a lot of stuff in my shirt pockets and it flew out. Two security guys grabbed me and tried to throw me out. They didn't know I had permission to be there. Well, I resisted. The crowd booed. They did usher me out, but that's how I got started."

It didn't take long for the former teacher and retired Navy man -- who was a cheerleader at his all-boys high school and college -- to become one of the most recognized men in Detroit sports. Because in addition to his vocal enthusiasm, Joe Diroff is endowed with memorable eyebrows. One eyebrow, actually, that goes all the way across his forehead. That's why they call Joe "The Brow."

Being a cheerleader is not always fun and games. Like when the Lions go to Chicago to challenge the Bears at Soldier Field.

"All I did was have a big sign that said, 'LIONS,' " Diroff says. Three guys came down and threw me over the top row of seats. Well, I landed in the laps these young girls, which wasn't bad."

As a result of that incident, Diroff no longer goes to Lions games in Chicago. But he does still drive 300 miles to Chicago (and as far as 700 miles to Green Bay) to see the team off from the hotel to the stadium. "It's sort of a routine. I do it for the Redwings, too," he says. "I go to the hotel with half a dozen signs and put them up until the management asks me to take them down. When it comes time for the players to leave the stadium, I hold up signs as they head for the bus and give them a bon voyage. Then I hop in my car and head back to Detroit. I always get there in time to meet them afterward, at the airport.

"Oh, sure, I miss the game," The Brow says. "But I figure there's no way I, as an individual, am going to put a dent in that Chicago crowd noise. I figure, I'll go back to the airport in Detroit and meet them there."

There are pitfalls to being The Brow, but there are bonuses, too. He gets free admission and parking to Detroit sports events, although only the Lions actual provide him with a seat and meal ticket. Not that he needs it: Joe Diroff doesn't sit down.

* * *

Doctors told Barry Bradley to lie down but he wasn't ready.

The St. Petersburg business writer and editor hasn't missed watching or taping a Miami Dolphins game since the mid-1970s "even during those lean years." That includes the first week in October 1979, when he learned he had cancer.

"It was on the previous Wednesday that I found out I had to have cancer surgery," he says. "It was a fist-sized malignant tumor of my left kidney. They'd have to take out the kidney, the spleen and the adrenal gland. The doctor said I had to have it out as quickly as possible.

"They scheduled surgery for Monday morning, which meant I had to check into the hospital on Sunday morning. I said no, I can't do that, because the Dolphins are playing at 4 o'clock. I had them postpone the surgery from Monday to Tuesday. I stayed home that afternoon, watched the game and packed. I checked in after the game.

"It really happened," Bradley says. "They were amazed. I don't remember who the Dolphins were playing. But they won the game."

Was it worth it?

"Absolutely."

* * *

Each of us selects a hero or heroes based on different criteria. Strength, intelligence, sexual prowess, natural gifts and other characteristics draw us in; charisma or envy seals the pact.

There's no predicting whom a man might choose to immortalize. Y.A. Tittle and Albert Einstein could be as logical for me as Dick Butkus and Al Capone would be for you.

Some grown men even buy posters, autographed 8x10s and trading cards of their favorites. They build tchotchke shrines to athletes they'll never meet. And maybe they don't want to, wouldn't chance it to burst their bubbles. They follow athletes with a dedication that is almost mystical, although others may consider such devotion more appropriate for young boys.

Why do some men leave these things behind and others hang on forever?

"I think they still hold a very close emotional attachment with the sport," says Dr. George H. Sage, a retired professor of kinesiology and sociology at the University of Northern Colorado. Sage is the author of Power and Ideology in American Sport (Human Kinetics) and co-author (with Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen) of Sociology of North American Sport (William C. Brown). "There is this somebody who can perform the skills at such an incredibly high level that there is an attachment and fascination."

A lot of it, unfortunately, is programmed and packaged, a direct result of the way Madison Avenue markets today's athletes. Few sports heroes develop naturally; they're prepped, styled and propagandized. Athletic superstars are sold just like any other commodity, through advertising. Sportscasters speak in well-modulated, admiring tones about how wonderful, how great, how incredible, how terrific an athlete is.

"I think all of that feeds into what is already there in the mind of somebody who admires a particular athlete," Sage says.

Dr. Gregory B. Collins advises men to pick their heroes wisely. "One of the best comments I ever heard about this," he says, "was from an athlete who cautioned young people about worshipping athletes. He said,'Your heroes really should be your parents and you shouldn't look to athletes to fill that need for you.' I think that is good advice."

Phoenix Suns basketball star Charles Barkley said it bluntly in a 1993 commercial for Nike: "I am not a role model. I don't get paid to be a role model."

There are personalities that attract attention by virtue of being good at their jobs, remaining humble about their talents and generally likeable. You can build loyalty to players who stick around like Walter Payton, who was with the Bears for 13 seasons.

"The Bears were always the team for me," Larry Mayer says. "I looked up to Payton. He joined the team when I was nine years old. You grow up to follow the players and know the team. I liked Larry Csonka -- maybe it was because he had the same first name as I did."

Nobody said this hero thing was scientific.

Sticking with Chicago icons, former Bears coach Mike Ditka won legions of fans because he comes across as such a common man, a kick-ass-and-take-names guy, even though he owns restaurants and appears in TV and print ads for myriad products. He still exudes a blue-collar, down-to-earth persona that people can relate to; they feel like they're a friend of his.

We revere people who can make $43-million in six years for throwing a football. Many men and boys would like to be like that.

Kids especially need heroes. If they latch on to a Lawrence Taylor or Phil Simms, when those guys perform well, the kid feels like a million bucks. It's a way of borrowing some identity from an athlete who is performing well. If a boy wears a jersey with Taylor's number on his back there is a part of the child that feels he is sharing in L.T.'s performance.

There's a downside to forming such attachments, too. Careers don't last forever. And winning streaks are usually followed by losing streaks.

"Our players are our heroes as long as they do well," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says, "but when they start to falter, when they decline, they hear it loud and clear from the fans. The fans are expressing the disappointment that their heroes are not playing up to par because not only does it affect what happens to the team but it affects how I feel about myself. If I'm identifying with you as a star player and I need to connect with you, I need to have you do well so I feel good about me."

Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie helped with a 1984 Miller Lite study of fans in America. Some of the conclusions chilled him.

"I think it is scary when you think how important heroes can be," the San Jose State University professor of psychology says. "But when fans were asked for the most important role models for their children, boys and girls, they said athletic heroes. That, to me, as a clinical psychologist, makes an eloquent statement about our society and its values and the sort of noble heroes we reinforce. I was really saddened that these were the primary models for youth."

Ogilvie's own heroes represented a different era, external to sports -- Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt, for example. Figures of great sociological significance.

"When I was young," he says, "I thought I might head toward medicine. I was astounded that sports fans had an entirely different orientation. I was genuinely saddened. I thought it made a statement about something that was going on in our society. But I said, 'Who in the hell am I to judge?' People find their heroes wherever they can. Perhaps I was being a little bit idealistic. I was hoping they would mention some figures out of history."

Is it better to have football heroes than no heroes at all?

"Yes, of course," Ogilvie says. "We all have to be standing on our toes reaching for something beyond ourselves or we don't achieve. We don't move forward and unfortunately we don't contribute in any way. I think you have to reach."

* * *

Hero worship is weird for the players, too. Some don't know how to deal with the adulation and attention. Many deflect the imposition of responsibility that society saddles them with as "role models" for our youth. We want our heroes to be perfect in every way, but we also want to know that they are human and that they have frailties and flaws like us. It's a crazy relationship.

"It bends the player's perception of reality," Dr. Gregory B. Collins says. "How important they are, how they fit into things and a total team organizational concept. It can really distort their perspective about relationships, money and self-importance. It can be so rewarding in the short run that they really don't look at anything beyond it. There is a lot of desire not to have the party end. People just don't plan for when it will."

It's not that these guys don't deserve our worship but that they are human beings just like we are. Earning a million bucks for smashing quarterbacks doesn't make a college junior into a sensitive and loving role model. But somehow we elevate them into positions that are difficult, if not impossible, for them to maintain. There's a terrific amount of pressure for high-profile, elite athletes to sustain their image in the public but the gods have clay feet. They are human beings and we forget that. Their troubles -- and it seems all runners eventually stumble -- satisfy some kind of desire that people have to see their heroes fail.

Men look for models, people they can hold in high esteem. A lot of us go to an extreme, putting our heroes in a box where they are doomed to fail. There are very few heroes who can live up to our extraordinary expectations.

"Even a person like Larry Bird," Dr. John M. Silva says. "Boston had as much of a love affair with him as anybody and he still got booed. The expectations are so high and people want them to be met. It's part of an opportunity to have something as close to perfection as possible, as if this person never makes mistakes. 'This person always hits the big shot for us. This is something I can depend on. There aren't many things in life I can depend on but I can depend on Larry.' "

It just doesn't last. Larry Byrd misses shots. Wade Boggs fools around. Art Schlichter gambles. Len Bias snorts coke. Dexter Manley tests positive for pot four times. Michael Jordan lays odds on his golf game.

Of course, we're no more reliable than our heroes. We fair-weather fans abandon our team if it looks like they won't make the playoffs and choose an alternative team. And when we turn on favorite players and teams, look out.

"The fans who keep their loyalties to the players the longest really turn with vindictiveness," Silva says. "We saw it in 1992 with the New Orleans Saints. The fans were 500 percent behind them during the season. Sellout, frenzied crowds that loved their team all the way up to the playoffs. Then the team lost for the second year in a row in the first game of the playoffs. The fans were ready to hang Bobby Ebert. He had a rough game and he made some decisions that contributed to the team's loss, but he was singled out and taken to task quite heavily. The talk shows there were relentless, lambasting Ebert."

Fans will stay loyal the longest to players, choosing to point the fickle finger of blame at officials, owners and coaches, in that order. Once we do turn on the players, we attack . It's a way of trying to resolve our dissidence. "I rooted so hard for this team! I told so many people how great they were and I bought all this stuff!" How do you reconcile that? How do you balance that psychic investment? Am I going to have to blame officiating or coaching? Am I going to blame the players?

I certainly am not going to take the blame.

Might as well knock yesterday's hero off his pedestal. He was precariously perched, anyhow.

"Fans scratch away at the clay feet to expose the ordinary man," Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie says. "These people gain not security but an artificial form of self-assurance -- 'Oh, well, even the heroes are not that great,' and so on. These people shift their loyalties just as quickly as you can snap your finger."

Ogilvie says people who can transfer their allegiances so quickly, who won't hesitate to turn last week's hero into this week's goat, have some real problems of their own.

"There would have to be some serious inadequacies in people who derive their satisfaction out of seeing heroes fall," he says, "whether they are their own or other fans' heroes. It's like the people who seem to get a vicarious charge out of seeing someone hurt. The quarterback gets knocked out of the game and they are enraptured by this. It borders on sadism. A psychological sadism. They are tickled to death, shouting, 'Bring in the meat wagon!'" 

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 21. She's No Woman, She's My Wife

by Bob Andelman

"Why do you bug me during football? Did I bother you during childbirth?"

Tim Taylor
TV Host, "Tool Time"
Detroit

Mothers. Daughters. Wives. Sisters. Women in-laws.

Perhaps the greatest unspoken reason that men love football is because it gives many of us a few precious, uninterrupted hours away from those wonderful women in our lives.

Football presents one of the last great places where men can hide out. It's a game that women are not going to start playing any time soon and that few women care to attend in person, so men can still be men and watch the games, hootin' and hollerin' and behaving like jerks. Like Three Stooges movies, women just don't get it.

"Has football gotten in the way of relationships? I'm sure it has," Barry Dreayer says. "Past relationships didn't have a clue what was going on, didn't want to to have a clue."

Love 'em, hate 'em, can or can't live without 'em, men feel that women often complicate their lives at all the wrong times. Twelve-forty-five on Sunday afternoon is not the time to ask the man in your life to get up and do anything. It is not the time to engage him in deep conversation about Junior's grades or suspicions that Muffy is a lesbian. And it is definitely not the time to complain that he hasn't been showing you enough attention lately. Because for the next 6 hours, it isn't going to get any better.

Some women threaten their husbands with divorce because they can't bear the thought of losing them to football one more week. Some women do more than threaten.

Retired Nabisco Brands sales management executive and Los Angeles Rams superfan Jim Runels decided two could play that game. He divorced his football-hating wife and married a woman who not only tolerates the game but loves it.

"My first wife? I had to sneak off by telling her I was going to play golf," Runels says. "Then I'd go see a football game. I'd come back late and she'd bitch and complain. She'd get mad at me. I'd never hear the end of it. I could never get her to go to a football game."

Runels' home office in Yorba Linda, California, is packed with all manner of Rams paraphernalia -- hats, phones, umbrellas, helmet telephones, directors chairs, pins, cards. "Plus I have jerseys -- Bob Waterfield's No. 7 with my name on the back!" he says. "My first wife, I could never get through the front door with this stuff. When I met my second wife, Marge, I made it clear I was a Rams fan. I sent her a Rams card and she sent me back a Rams magnet and a note that said, 'See? I'm a Rams fan, too!' We clicked."

The new Mr. & Mrs. Runels -- members of the Rambassadors fan club -- make annual sojourns to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl and have even been to the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The day before he got married, Joe DiRaffaele, owner of Labor World, a Coconut Creek, Florida, chain of temporary help services, told his bride there were a few things about him that she needed to know.

"One day, I'm moving back to New York," he said. "And Saturdays, I watch football. And Sundays, I watch football. I don't go out."

She knew what she was getting into, DiRaffaele felt. "You know how things change when you got married and have kids? She had to understand."

Then, an amazing thing happened. One day, Kim turned to her husband and said, "You have to teach me about football." And she got into it. One Monday night, the Dolphins were playing the Jets and Joe set the VCR to tape the game while he was out. "But my wife watched it," he says. "When I got home she said, 'The Jets really got hosed.' " Joe decided right then and there that he was a lucky man, married to a rare woman.

Time passed and the DiRaffaeles' daughter was born, on a Saturday. Joe, of course, was watching college football at the time.



"Every time football is on, my daughter watches," DiRaffaele says. "She's 20 months old. I call 'Touchdown' and she does the referee's touchdown signal. She does clipping -- she bends and puts her hand behind her knee. When commercials come on, she walks away. I guess she likes the action of it. My wife has a black shirt with Joe Montana on it going back to pass. My daughter points to it and says, 'Football!' We're a football family."

Ralph Weisbeck's wife likes football, too, but she doesn't watch many games.

"She gets too excited," Weisbeck says, laughing. "She only comes in if we're three touchdowns ahead. She won't watch the game from the beginning; she's afraid they're going to lose. She can't stand losing."

Modern women discover a number of ways to cope with their men on NFL Sundays. They:

• Leave for a few hours.

• Stay, bitch and moan.

• Learn the game.

The rest of Why Men Love Football might be subtitled And The Women Who Want to Kill Them as we suggest possible responses for women struggling with man who plan to watch football come what may.

In the Berger household, Eric's love of football led to separate TVs and separate activities on Sunday. "My wife doesn't get into sports," he says, "but she tolerates it because she knows it's important to me. She knew how it was when we got married and it's not going to change."

Women often feel that football transforms their men into spectators in their own lives. They're probably right. But as one wife put it, "Football keeps him home. It's a hobby. My women friends say, 'Thank God he has something to keep him busy.' "

The same woman almost divorced her husband when he lost his job and filled his days as commissioner of a fantasy football league. They worked that out, but she became a staunch advocate of being anywhere but the living room when her husband pitches camp to watch football. She has no interest in the game. Rather than pouting and tapping her foot, waiting an eternity for the game to end, she'll go out with other disaffected women. Or she'll tackle paperwork brought home from the office.

Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Seppo E. Iso-Ahola says women should accept football as part of their man's behavior. "If you start arguing with that, especially if it's with somebody highly, psychologically invested in football, that is only going to lead to problems," he says. "It is much easier to accept that and say, 'Okay, my husband or boyfriend likes that and chose that and I accept that.' That doesn't cause problems."

"I think each person should have a parallel life," Dr. John M. Silva says. "If I'm going to sit at home all afternoon and watch TV, I shouldn't hold my wife prisoner and make her watch TV. If she wants to go out and tend the garden or go shopping, I think it's important for two things to go on. One, that the woman develops some appreciation for the interests of her spouse, and two, that they also have enough independence in their relationship that they can pursue some separate interests."

There's another good reason for women to flee on NFL Sundays. If they stay, men may expect to be waited on.

A lot of husbands want their wives nearby, even if they are not watching the game. They want them in the house to serve them, answer the phone, keep the kids quiet, get the beer and run to 7-Eleven for more when it runs out.

Hey, doll! We're out of pretzels! Are those nachos ready yet? How 'bout some beer!

"I can see the argument or displeasure with each other," Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie says. "What can you tell women? Have a women's Sunday, doing things that please them. Leave the home scene because you are not going to change these apes. Do something that brings you pleasure. Be selfish. Go out and do something very, very selfish so you come home and feel totally good about what you have done."

Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum recommends that women construct more of a life of their own and develop independent interests so that while their man watches the game, they can do something besides family chores.

"There are couples who can do that," he says, "but there is also a risk, too, because the more people do that then the more they go their separate ways. After a while comes into play new questions: 'How much do they really need each other? How much do they really have with each other? Would they rather go separate ways and get involved in their separate activities and interests or do they really have shared interests and things in common? Do they really want to be together?' Going their own way is okay on Sunday if it's really important to him or on Saturday to watch the game. She can make that accommodation and do other things provided that there are enough other times in the course of their week that they have more mutuality, togetherness and harmony. In that scenario, the relationship probably can work."

Women can find themselves in a no-win predicament if their husbands and boyfriends don't take pains to understand the potential for conflict on Sundays. It doesn't speak well for the survival of these relationships if, to survive, a power game develops in which the husband/boyfriend is in control of the relationship and dictates, "This is what I want to do and this is what I like. Either fit in, go along with it or don't."

Every woman has her own way of dealing with separation anxiety on game day.

Chicago Bear Report managing editor Larry Mayer's second date with the woman he eventually married was at the Bears' 1987 season opener, a Monday night game versus the New York Giants. The Bears won the two previous Super Bowls and Mayer couldn't think of a more exciting place to be. His future bride didn't let on at the time than any place else would have been more exciting to her.

"My wife hates sports," Mayer says. "She was just being polite. She can't stand sports. She only travels on the road with me because the Bears play in good cities. In Tampa, she goes to the mall across the street from the stadium. In New Orleans, she brings a paperback to read in the stadium."




* * *
Railing about a toilet seat perpetually left up would probably prove less aggravating and more constructive than trying to talk a man out of watching football on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

"If a woman asks her husband to do things other than watch football, he won't find that acceptable. That can very easily lead to arguments," Iso-Ahola says. "In that context, I can see why violence would happen. These males are very highly invested, psychologically, in this game. Their tolerance level for other things is low. There is psychological data that has shown that when we watch or observe somebody else perform aggressively then our own behavior tends to become aggressive as well.

Therefore when these men are watching football -- an aggressive and violent sport -- their feeling of hostility in general tends to significantly increase. If you have an opportunity or situation at home that lends itself to arguments, then it is easier for the man who is already aggressively aroused, or in a hostile mood, to act."

The expression "football widow" refers to spouses of football fans who become invisible to their families from October to January. If yours is a busy family, working all week or busy with the kids, there is the expectation -- not unfairly -- that on Sunday you'll have some time together. But if the guy is more excited and interested in watching the game on TV than in having an outing with his family, he better expect trouble.

In that kind of stereotypical situation, a wife may feel aggrieved and neglected, that "This is our one day to really be together and go out, but you'd rather sit by the tube and watch football! You'd rather be married to football than me!" The husband retaliates: "Hey, I've worked hard and busted my butt all week. Finally, I have a chance to relax, drink a few beers and enjoy the game. But you won't give me space and the room to relax." He feels nagged and a mutual resentment builds.

One of the things that tends to help women a lot is trying to understand not only their own point of view but to get in the other person's shoes. One of the ways couples can do this is to switch roles. Stand back from being so hot under the collar and role-play with each other, assuming the other person's lines. Have a dialogue with the man expressing the views that he thinks the woman has and the woman expressing the views that she thinks the man has. If they can do that, they are in a position to better understand how the other one feels. Once there is greater appreciation for that, there is more of a foundation for negotiation.

Smart, experienced couples don't wait for NFL Sunday to arrive. They anticipate it before it happens, negotiate their needs ahead of time and trade off. "This Sunday, I'm going to watch the 49ers game and next Sunday we are going to do something else together." Or they'll structure Sunday so that at 4 p.m. she knows he is going to be watching the game. "I'm going to be watching the game but let's do something together in the morning and the afternoon before 4."

Dr. Michael Messner says discussion in social science circles about the viewing of violent sports revolves around whether it is something that helps men blow off steam or something that makes men more aggressive and prone to violence. Most of the evidence compiled by psychologists suggests the latter.

"Viewing aggressive and violent sports like boxing or football is more likely to de-sensitize men to violence and victims of violence," Messner says. "In terms of domestic violence, one of the things that is important to recognize is that when fans identify with teams, half of the fans are losing all the time. So if a man watches an aggressive, violent sport coupled with drinking some alcohol with his friends and his team loses, his aggression and frustration level both simultaneously go up. The tendency, once the game is over, to turn that aggression and frustration on someone close is what explains the fact that women's shelters always report much more activity and business on Super Bowl Sunday. In other parts of the world, during World Cup soccer, the same thing happens."

During the media hype leading up to Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena, California in 1993, much was made of a report that Super Bowl Sunday is the busiest day of the year for women's shelters. An author of the report, Garland F. White, a sociologist at Old Dominion University, immediately claimed the report's findings were taken out of context. But many social scientists and psychologists nonetheless believe Super Bowl Sunday is a very dangerous day for women.

Some women want to learn about sports and get involved as much as possible themselves so as not to leave this as some sort of exclusive male territory. Other women do the exact opposite and on football Sundays they take shopping days with their women friends and get out.

"Rather than seeing this as something that women need to respond to," Messner says, "I think it's something that men need to think about and talk to each other about. Not necessarily that we should quit liking or watching sports together but I think we should try to understand the way it is connected to other parts of our lives. What it means to us in terms of our relationships to women. Does watching sports and the way we watch sports contribute to more supportive and intimate and peaceful relations with women? Or does it separate us more and make us more likely to be antagonistic and even violent towards women?

"Those are questions that men need to ask themselves," Messner says. "Until we do, women are going to be left trying to find ways to keep themselves safe rather than participating with us as equals."

A completely different school of thought suggests that women can never fully appreciate the game, no matter how hard they try. It's just not in their makeup.

Dr. William Beausay says that the large majority of women found at football games go there not to watch the game, but to accompany their companion. "I used to know the exact percentage of women who go because they love football -- it was about 8.6 percent," he says. Even that small number was made up of women who liked the sport for its pageantry, the atmosphere, the colors, the music and the spirit, Beausay says.

"They would never say the powerful team or an effective team, a great athletic prowess or winning. Those weren't the reasons. There were usually aesthetic reasons for women," he says.




So, according to his research, most women at football games are there because of their men. If the men didn't go, they wouldn't be found dead there.

"I don't think women are socialized in the same way as men," Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen says. "They are raised in the same type of society but they are raised to be feminine. To be feminine is to not be aggressive and not be dominant and they also don't play football. They haven't had that experience for the most part and, in fact, when it comes to football, they are on the sidelines being the supporters, cheering and all of that kind of thing while men are the doers. I think this represents a very sexist kind of society, but that is, in fact, what we are.

"Many women get into football and enjoy it, too" he says. "I don't think they have the same depth of feeling that men do because we have played it. We understand the intricacies of football and the precision that it takes to really have a play work well as well as the level of aggression. I don't know that women understand that because none of their sports in our society really are that way. They can be a little bit aggressive in field hockey and things like that but it is not the same."

Silva says he's intrigued by the way football coaches encourage their young men to develop aggression to be hitters, blockers and tacklers, giving rewards for the "best hit of the week." Best hits are bone-crushers, where the opponent who was tackled does not get up for a while. Players gets decal on their helmets for causing that.

"An ex-Denver Bronco told me that every Monday, some people had envelopes in their lockers with money in them," Silva says. "It was for extra hard hits. That's against league rules but it's just part of this macho thing. I said, don't you realize that if every team does that it increases the level of people getting hurt? He said, 'You don't think of it that way. You think of it on an individual basis and you are being rewarded.' Men have been socialized to understand this mentality; I'm not sure very many women do. In many ways women have been robbed because our work world is an aggressive, tough, rock 'em-sock 'em kind of place where men have the advantage of this kind of experience that women don't."

Men get really upset when their mates cannot identify with something that is as crucial to them as football.




"It is important if you can develop some appreciation and some knowledge for the sport," Silva says. "I don't care which way it goes, male/female, female/male. If the wife is interested in some sport, it behooves the husband to develop some interest and vice versa. Some games, I really do enjoy having my wife watch with me.

"I'll say, 'Do you know what happened right there? Do you know what that call was? Why did the team that recovered get to keep the ball?' " he explains. "Sometimes men watch and we know what is going on but our spouses don't. I find that the more I ask questions, the more knowledgeable my wife gets about the sport and the more knowledgeable she gets the more interested she is. One of the reasons a lot of women are not interested is they don't have a full understanding and appreciation. And when they ask a 'stupid' question, especially in front of your friends, they get ridiculed. What is that going to do?"

Some women gravitate to the game and meet with resistance if they get to liking it too much. They start watching it with their boyfriends, husbands or friends but find that men have a really hard time talking to them about it and taking it seriously.

"My sister told me that it took her husband's friends 10 years to accept the fact that she knew as much as they did about the Raiders," Messner says. "They did eventually learn to respect that she knows the game and she is very happy now that occasionally they will even ask for her opinion on something.

They didn't even know how to talk to a woman about those things. There is an assumption among men that women will not be interested, aren't interested and aren't knowledgeable."

That's been Larry Selvin's experience. Sort of. "Either women don't understand the rules or they don't know the players. If they know the rules and a few of the players, they're tolerable," he says.

"Actually, that goes for men or women."

Dan Jiggetts, the former Chicago Bears player turned sportscaster, enjoys talking football with women. "Most guys will seek out a woman that wants to watch a football game with them," he says. "They're very understanding. When you want to sit down and talk strategy, the women listen. They lock in. The guys say they understand, but the strategy goes over their heads. They're watching who gets knocked on their tail."

"My wife is a Cleveland Browns fan," Atlanta management consultant Mark von Dwingelo says. "When we watch games, she occasionally asks, 'Why'd that happen?' Or, 'Why'd they call that penalty?' I appreciate it. It's only annoying if the Browns are playing the Giants. If the Giants are on, she knows the game will only last three hours -- she can hold her questions. She'll say something to me and I'll say, 'Gretch, what am I doing?' And she'll say, 'Okay, I'll ask you later.'"

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!