Every Saturday we ask some of our favorite writers to fill in for us. Today, a man by the name of John Devore gives you a brief history of the sport that will be dominating your weekend. Mr. Devore has been an editor at Maxim and has written for other magazines (which are like the internet, but on paper and with skinnier pornography). You can find him online at Chickenhead.com.
Tomorrow is our nation's high holiday: The World Series of Football. The armchair atheists have it all wrong. America is not a theocracy full of McJesus zombies praying for LOTTO windfalls. We're a secular nation, Mammon-damnit. Greed is a delicious, evil root that tastes great with butter and sour cream, and tomorrow our land will explode with nacho cheese, body paint and testosterone-jacked Orcs racing to make as much money as they can before their bodies fall apart. The contest is between the attitudinal woodpeckers and the industrial revolutionaries, and I predict that I don't care who wins.
The skinny guy in the back's the punter.
"Isn't it anti-American to not watch the Super Bowl?" you might ask. Buster, I crap fleets of thimble-sized bald eagles, each screaming "U-S-A!" I snuck into the tribal areas of Pakistan inside a living camel and beat Osama Bin Laden to death with a waffle iron, and I kept it a secret because I want the terrorists to feel safe. I just called you "buster." That's how I am with America.
But I hate football because, as a nation, we can do better. There are so many sports superior to football, and yet we embrace a game that's only enduring value is that its ebb and flow allows television networks to spackle every inch, crevice and animated infographic with commercials. I love commercials as much as anyone. Advertising is the only mass art form that conveys our collective fears and hopes, and it will adorn the hologram walls of space museums hundreds of years from now.
"My God, they really were retarded."
But football gets in the way of commercials. You know why soccer isn't more popular in America (besides the socks, lack of scoring and the fact that Europeans look like elves)? It's because it is nearly impossible to wrap commercials around that game. You can go 10 whole minutes during a soccer match without finding out how to get "cash 4 gold." Advertisers hate that, and so they make sure you hate it too.
Did I just claim that football sucks worse than soccer? I'll do you one better: Football sucks worse than golf, and golf is a just a happy walk through a pretty park with a club of men who are directly responsible for drunk joy-riding our economy off a cliff. Do you know any regular dudes who love to golf? You do? I'm sorry, then, you're a dick purse.
Just some regular dudes.
But football is worse than golf. Football ruins the half-time show, which is the totally amazing love child of two subtle American art forms, Monster Truck Rallies and Broadway. Speaking of, the sport itself is in denial. I like my mass homoerotica to be out, loud, and proud. Plus, why settle for a gigantic metaphor for war when we've got two raging, and another couple warming up on the sidelines.
See I know football. I grew up a Texan, and we Texans are the closest this country will ever get to Vikings. Growing up, my father worshipped three people: Jesus, Patsy Cline and Tom Landry. I worship Zeus, Dark Phoenix and the main Keebler Elf (the Warlord Elf Pimp who's in charge of getting those cookies from the tree, to the box, to my shouthole) but I don't blame Texas loving football. It's a religion there, and even the poorest, bleakest West Texas town has a sparkling ziggurat upon which local high school pigskin warriors are celebrated and sniffed at by scouts, before their future use to society is sacrificed to appease the gods of sporting combat.
A pep-rally at a small West Texas high school.
But you can't blame Texans. They spent the better part of the nineteenth century hanging Comanches, Mexican bandits and horse thieves. Old habits die hard. There's a lot of residual bloodlust to work out there.
But come on, we can do better. Why isn't bull-riding (Beef NASCAR as I call it) the American sport to end all sports? It's an epic battle of the wills between a man and an angry cheeseburger; and if that doesn't typify our awesome civilization, I don't know what does.
How about UFC? It's like boxing, except there's more blood, missionary position and brain damage. If they renamed it "Knuckle Rape Thunderdome," it might bring about the end of all other sports. Hell, I'll take Badminton over football. They play with something called a "shuttlecock," and that's pretty funny, especially if you're a 34-year-old hack comedy writer. Shuttlecock. The jokes just write themselves.
You might be asking where baseball, America's alleged pastime (emphasis on "past"), fits into all of this. Baseball is radio, and radio is a lot of words, and words suck. Let the batter keep his bat and supply the basemen with barb-wire wrapped hubcap shields and then we can talk.
You don't have to say yes. Just say you'll think about it.
Go ahead and watch the football show. Pump your fist and celebrate pointless berserker rage, grotesque consumerism and spandex sodden with man juices. Just don't invite me to your parties. I'll be rolling with my bitches, those football widows who will spend tomorrow taking in a matinee of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button before indulging at the Cold Stone Creamery and talking about Gossip Girl. Enjoy the game. Just know that the whole time, I will be eyeball-molesting your girlfriends and wives.
I also hate football because when I was a teenager, I was a fat asthmatic who couldn't make the team.
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