If you’re going to live somewhere and fly your flag for any team other than the locals, though, I think Washington, D.C. is as good a place as any to do it. It’s a cliché very much grounded in reality: almost nobody is from D.C. Everybody moved here at some point from somewhere else. I do run across a fair number of New York fans, which I attribute not only to D.C.’s oasis-of-transients vibe but also the fact that the NY market encompasses New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the union AND the one most likely to make people look around and say “I gotta get outta here.” There’s also strong representation from Steelers Nation around here, too – “here” being both “the greater northern Virginia mega-suburb” and also “the house where I live.”
All of which is to say, yes, of course, I stayed up until the very end of the NFL season opener last night to watch the Steelers win in OT. I actually prefer higher-scoring shoot-outs with multiple lead changes (damn fantasy football has clearly rotted my brain) but it was a really good game. Troy Polamalu’s one-handed near-goalline interception early on was sweet (and in my house “Interception Polamalu Touchdown!” is something we say now and then like some kind of totemic invocation of power); Hines Ward scowling on the sideline after he fumbled a potential game-clincher was just surreal (Ward always smiles, even when he gets leveled by a defender. Google “Hines Ward angry” and I swear you get this image:
He’s an upbeat dude.)
Also, always enjoyable, some new Coors Light “Coach! Coach!” ads. Coors Light is quite possibly the worst abuse of the definition of the word ‘beer’ but I look forward to those spots every year. Bad product, great marketing, God Bless America. Although I swear I saw a brand new spot during overtime – why did Coors buy ad time for overtime? How did they know the game would go that long? When will the Colorado Mole People Conspiracy be exposed???
Well, if the mole people do rise up I hope it’s not on a Sunday in the fall. Football has a special and much-loved place in our household, even though we’re of divided loyalties as usual. As mentioned, my wife Confluenza and I root for different teams: the Giants are my team, the Steelers are hers. Rooting for different teams in the same division in baseball encompasses its fair share of tension and rivalry, although considering how much venomous rancor the Yankees usually inspire in non-fans, my beloved O’s supporter is sweeter about my NYY fandom than I have any right to expect from anyone, bound to me in holy matrimony or no. On the hockey side, conversely, I root for the New York Rangers out of family tradition, but I’m not superinvested in them from season to season, the way my wife is in the Pittsburgh Penguins, and that disparity means there’s really not much to get worked up over. (Little Bro, on the other hand, is a rabid Rangers fan and this leads to some interesting brother-in-law/sister-in-law smack talk at family get-togethers.)
Most seasons the Giants and the Steelers don’t play each other at all, in fact can’t play each other unless they meet in the Superbowl (which is something both Confluenza and I believe we will see in our lifetime). When the rare year rolls around – as it did last year – in which the AFC North teams play the NFC East teams in the regular season, it really doesn’t cause that much of a stir. (But the Giants won the game. I’m just sayin’.) The two teams finished the season with identical records and went to the playoffs, and my team played poorly and got bounced in the first round, and her team played well enough to make it to the Superbowl and win their sixth Lombardi, with me rooting for them whoopingly right beside Confluenza.
It was pretty easy for me to be magnanimous about the whole thing because the Giants had just won the Superbowl the year before. How crazy is that? How many couples get to take turns with their respective teams being World Champs? In baseball, my team has made the post-season every year but one in the past thirteen and is currently pennant-bound; my wife’s is basement-dwelling and finishing their twelfth sub-.500 season. In hockey the Rangers most recently won the Stanley Cup in ’94 for the first time since 1940; the Pens are current champions and people are talking dynasty. But in football in just the past five Superbowls (or about the amount of time Confluenza and I have been together) there have been two Steelers appearances and one by the Giants, and all three of those appearances ended up wins. No sour grapes around here.
So we’ve been good about being happy for each other during football season, the Giants’ most recent championship probably being the best example of this. At the time of Superbowl XLII my wife was pregnant (barely – maybe five or six weeks) and on bedrest for a subchorionic bleed, which was fairly scary. For as long as we had been trying to start a family, she had been looking for signs, portents and good omens that might be interpreted to mean she would get pregnant, she would keep the pregnancy, she would deliver a healthy baby … she’s a bit of a worrier and a pessimist so believing in any of those things didn’t come easy. You might remember that when the Giants went to the Superbowl in question they faced the to-that-point undefeated New England Patriots and were severe underdogs, and they were playing from behind a lot. And then it looked like Eli Manning was going to get sacked … but he didn’t! And the ball went up, and it looked like there was no way David Tyree was going to come down with it … but he did! And the drive continued and the Giants took the lead! And the defense held the Patriots off! And MY Giants – so improbably! – won the Superbowl. And the very first thing I said to my wife was, “How’s THAT for a good sign?” To her everlasting credit, she agreed it was a pretty good sign. Obviously we have living proof that it was a very good sign, underscored by the fact that our healthy baby was born during the ’08 season opener, another game which the Giants won. (In retrospect, our son is very lucky that, in those halcyon days before the idiotic mishandling of Glocks at nightclubs made news, we did not name him “Plaxico”. Close call, that.)
So yeah, we love football, we love this time of year, and life is good.
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