FOR THE LOVE OF FOOTBALL

FOR THE LOVE OF FOOTBALL

Football Season. Why do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

What a minute, we’re talking about football, not love sonnets right?

To play sports, one must have profound passion, desire, emotion, hunger and commitment for the love of sport and love of the sport.

I just flat love the game of football. There really are so many reasons why.

Football is a unique game that requires an interconnectivity of teamwork and interdependence of the players that is unlike any other sport. There is the complex strategy, the endless social opportunities, feats of athleticism that are so superhuman they defy our sense of logic. 350-pound men leaping into the air with arms stretched like ballerinas to catch an impossible pass, and then performing an equally impossible endzone dance that makes Beyonce look like an amateur.

Is that not anything less than poetry in motion?

My life began with a colorful timeline of events that are closely associated with football. The NY Jets to be exact.  My earliest memory of life was of my parents coming home from a NY Jets game with the chinstrap of Sherman Plunkett, a giant 300lb offensive tackle who, according to Joe Namath, coined the term “Broadway Joe”.  My parents sat out in the cold on metal seats to watch those games. And when not at a game they were at home, with a crowd of other crazy fans squished into our little living room, leaping off the couch and yelling at the little black and white TV while giant home-made “hoagie” sandwiches impressively piled as high as humanly possible with layers of multiple meats, cheeses, tomato, lettuce, onion, more meat, more cheese until it achieved “Dagwood” status took center stage on the coffee table.

In November 1964, before that Jim Plunkett chinstrap moment, my 10-year old husband and some of his 10-year old friends were playing football in a field by a water tower by a house of a friend of Joe Namath in southern Alabama. David and his little buds thought they were so big-time when these University of Alabama college football players, Joe Namath and David Ray, stumbled across them playing a game of football and asked to join.

Joe picked up the ball and told my young husband to go out for a pass. James took off at full speed and ran his living hardest. Joe yelled, “farther!” and farther he ran. “FARTHER,” yelled Joe, “KEEP GOING!” he yelled. When Joe was just a tiny speck at the end of the water tower field, Joe threw, and in what seemed to be a millisecond, a sound like a sharp spinning whistle, and like a meteorite breaking the sound barrier the pass hit my husband dead in the gut with a UHMPH!  Knocked him flat and every bit of breath out of him like a squashed water balloon. The next year Joe started with the NYJ.

And then there’s the commercials. The most entertaining and expensive seconds in the history of mankind play out during football season culminating with Super Bowl. Joe Namath himself started the trend with his infamous Hanes pantyhose commercial, the camera panning from the feet of a reclined figure up the sexy looking legs until it reaches the face of Joe Namath.  “Now, I don’t wear pantyhose. But if Beautymist can make my legs look good, imagine what they’ll do for yours,” he purrs.  Let me tell you, this was a BIG deal in 1975!

And then there is the food. Football-watching cuisine today has evolved from mere greasy grub to gastronomic grandeur. Alongside the basics of Buffalo wings and Doritos, tailgate parties now range from BBQ Throwdown Wars at the back of a $75,000 pickup to chateaubriand and champagne in air-conditioned VIP tents.

And lastly, there is a neuro-socio-behavioral-scientifico reason we love this sport so much. It’s called beer. Or for some of us, WINE.

My football wine is not necessarily one that pairs with specific food.

Tinazzi Ca’ de Rocchi Corve from Veneto, Italy. I know it sounds like a mouthful. This wine is powerful but poetic, strategically complex to make, but plays out effortless like ballet. This Corvina has cherry, spices, cocoa and happens to go with pretty much any football food from barbeque to chateaubriand, college ball to pro.

I just flat love this wine.