We Are But Men... ROCK!

Football: a sport of grit, strength, and speed. A game of passion, determination, and perspiration. Starting with Friday Night Lights and continuing though Monday Night Football, you’ll never find four consecutive days with more hard-hitting, body-crunching, bone-splitting action than you will during autumn weekends on the grassy, green gridiron.

It’s a man’s sport. (Which man? Where is that man? What makes him a man? Or a man a man? Am I a man? What about He-man, merman, or woman? Man! ) You don’t just wake up one day and decide to play football. You have to be a man. A manly man.

Or you could be a wannabe man and wake up in your bed, alone (just like yesterday… and the day before… for the last 25 years), and tell your skinny, white, boney reflection that it's time to become a man. But without having the advantage of big, grumbly American Gladiators around, you decide to take matters into your weak, feeble, can-barely-lift-ten-pounds hands. You will search for your manhood.

After a scrumptious meal of eggs and toast, you put on your jacket and thank your mom as she ties your hood. You almost coolishly stroll out to your ’81 Honda (‘almost’ because you really don’t know what coolishly means, you think you heard Nicolas Cage use that word in Gone in 60 Seconds, but you’re not sure of that either because you’re not allowed to watch PG-13 movies) and run your hand across the hail-damaged hood. You then proceed to putter out of your neighbor-hood with the windows down blaring Boyz N da Hood.

From Main Street to University Avenue you scour the freshly mowed lawns and littered parks in search of man-life. (Is that Robin Hood?) And then you see it. You had only faintly heard of such a place before today… (mostly in chat rooms and blogs) but this was beyond anything any video game designer could… well… uh… design. The University intramural fields. (No, but really… Robin Hood wears tights, right? ‘Cause I swear… )

You never thought the uncoordinated and unathletic would one day share the same field as the speedy and agile. But somehow, in this magical world of flag football, the competition is leveled out. There are fat, old married guys, washed-up ex-high school ‘All-Americans’, and cocky, eighteen year old punks.

And there you stand… one of the uncoordinated and unatheletic, about to continue your journey from wannabe man to man. Your path: Football. (this wasn’t quite football… kind of pansyish actually, especially with the ‘no contact’ rule…) And, in your eyes, nothing could be more manly than prancing around like a fairy with a colorful belt around your waist playing grab-a**. (I mean, uh… grabbing flowers… uh, er… flags).