On logic and football

I became addicted to the National Football League at the age of thirteen. For the half-dozen or so years prior to my fledgling teenagery, professional American football was merely a childhood passion, firmly secondary to the total and tragic obsession known as the Boston Red Sox. Having been born in the shadow of Beantown, I attended my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park around the age of seven. After that, there was not much choice but to be a lifelong, much agonized fan of the BoSox.

But football was a different story. The first contest I remember watching (now as a resident of Washington, D.C.) was Super Bowl X, which the Pittsburgh Steelers won, 21-17, over the Dallas Cowboys. I was, again, seven years old at the time, and didn't really understand the game at all. But anything that garnered so much attention from children and adults alike was something that my childhood brain decided was important enough in which to become very interested.

So I decided that my favorite team was Dallas. Why? Because they were obviously a good team, having been in the Super Bowl; and as a timid, spineless tenderfoot with no sense of loyalty, I needed the reassurance of rooting for a winner. Plus, that star on the side of the helmet was really pretty, and like any red-blooded American child, I knew what being a cowboy was all about. A Steeler? What the hell is a Steeler? My mother tried to explain it to me; I still didn't get it. So Dallas it was.

A year or two later, all that would change. One of my fellow fourth graders, upon discovering that I was a Cowboys fan, confronted me with a logical assault from which there was no reasonable retreat. Quite simply, I could not define why I liked Dallas. Even at that age, I knew that rooting for a team for the sole reason that they usually won was, like, totally wimpy.

I was then told by my fellow tyke that I needed to root for the hometown team. He didn't suggest it; he commanded it; "You need to root for the Redskins." I can remember his words as if they were spoken yesterday, though the name of my friend has long since been forgotten. He was pretty cool though, and his argument made complete sense. Thus, on that fateful afternoon on the playground of Horace Mann Elementary School, my undying dedication to the Washington Redskins was born.

My new found allegiance was to be severely and immediately tested. After starting out with a record of 8-3 the following season, the Skins lost their last five games and missed the playoffs. To make matters worse, the most famous game (at the time) in the Redskins - Cowboys rivalry was not the 26-3 drubbing the Skins put on the boys in the 1972 Championship game, but rather the Thanksgiving game of 1974.

The Redskins came out and posted an early lead on the star-clad ones, then knocked their venerable quarterback, Roger Staubach, out of the game. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Redskins would win, even in the highlights.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Staubach's backup, a tacky, brillo-headed redneck named Clint Longley, came into the game and manufactured one of the most memorable comebacks off all time. Though he never did anything worth mentioning for the rest of his contemptible, insignificant life (the lone exception being a bizarre locker room sucker punch of the future hall-of-famer Staubach, an act that cost Longley his job and any slim chance he had of a future career in the NFL), he somehow managed to throw two touchdown passes in the second half of that ballgame to lead Dallas to a 24-23 victory. To this day, that game is cited as perhaps the most memorable game in the history of Thanksgiving Day games, and moreover, one of the most exciting NFL games ever witnessed.

There is no doubt that the highlights of that game will be replayed on some cable TV station this year near the end of November, as it is every year, and I'll be watching. It's happened every year for the past three decades of my life, so why should this year be any different. Accompanying the highlights will be an interview of Longley that I've seen twenty times.

I guess in this era of 500 cable channels on the air 24 hours a day, your 15 minutes of fame can last a lifetime.

Part of the reason that I enjoyed watching sports on TV was because I enjoyed playing them even more. As a kid, there's nothing like a carefree afternoon spent with your mates running around while throwing, hitting and catching a spherical object made from a dead animal's hide. So whenever I got the chance to see the best athletes in the world excel at their craft at the highest level possible, I took it.

Lately, however, I've been seriously questioning why I am so obsessed with professional football and the Redskins in particular. It has been over 20 years since I last played organized football, and about 15 years have passed since the famous "Mud Bowl," where about a dozen or so of my friends and I played a rousing game of tackle football in the rain of St. Albans football field on a chilly November morning. I could barely walk for a week afterwards and swore off the actual playing of football after that.

Thus, it seems totally illogical that the sport still consumes me as it does. My happiness between the months of September and January is inexorably tied to the success that 53 burgundy and gold-clad millionaires (who I do not know and will likely never meet) will have on a football field while playing a very sophisticated game of 'Smear the Queer.' They do not directly affect any significant aspect of my life.

When the Redskins win, I am not transformed into a better person. My boss does not promote me to a better job. My fiancé does not love me more. All I feel is a sense of joy that fades within a day or two, after I've read every single article available on the butt whipping the Skins put on their opponent.

When the Redskins lose, however, the consequences are quite severe. The next morning, I will inevitably awake feeling sick and disgusted, the extent of which depends on a number of factors. Tough loss against a supposedly inferior opponent during a week where the Cowboys won? You just might find me bent over the toilet. I'll have a thousand text messages in both the inbox and outbox of my phone, with in-depth, analytical content such as "Never should've lost that game. Pathetic. Play calling sucked my ass a million times over." And on and on.

During the game, the ill effects are even worse. When the Redskins are playing poorly, as they were in the second half against the Giants this past Sunday, I can actually feel my health deteriorate. My chest gets tight and my blood feels like lead. The veins in my neck begin to vacillate and pulse erratically. Things get thrown. Repairs are needed.

So much for football having no direct effect on my life.

Even when confronted with this logical argument, the idea that I could give up my devotion for Redskins is as unthinkable as changing my sexual preference. Why? What is it that makes this aspect of my life so important?

I posed this question to my fiancé, not really expecting an answer. In fact, I half expected her to say, "You know, you're really on to something here. It makes complete sense. You should stop watching football. How about we make popcorn and watch the Lifetime channel?" Instead, she provided the exact enlightenment for which I was searching:

"It's important for people to feel like they belong to a tribe."

And what better tribe to belong to than the Redskins?

Of course, there's more to it than that, but that was an excellent point. A sport encompasses much more than meets the eye, and it cannot be confined to logic. There are many lessons to be learned in sports, such as co-operative effort, of trying to achieve excellence, of self sacrifice for the betterment of the team.

For me, the most important lesson learnt was loyalty. As Bob Dylan once sung, "You got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend/You just want to be on the side that's winning." As a child, that's what I wanted - to be on the side that's winning, because I was afraid of the discomfort that comes with being on the losing side of things. So I rooted for a winner, or what seemed like a winner at the time. But I learned the importance of being true to my tribe, regardless of how tough things may look at any given time.

Seems to me there is no shortage of Cowboy fans that have never even been west of the Mississippi, and sadly, they have never been given the opportunity to learn that lesson. When the Cowboys are doing well, as they are this season, the blue and white jerseys can be seen everywhere. There's just something intrinsic about the fair-weather, front-running nature of Cowboy fans that brings them out of the woodwork when they want to be on the side that's winning. However, during the three consecutive 5-11 seasons under Chan Gailey, you wouldn't even know they watched football.

With the Redskins, the loyalty is constant. It's why the stadium is sold out every year. It's why the jerseys are worn no matter the record. And it's why, when I was living in Colorado, I dragged my ass down to a smelly, uncomfortable sports bar (with bad food and no atmosphere) at 11 a.m. every single morning, without fail, to watch Norv Turner's Redskins vomit their way to seasons of 3-13 and 4-12 during the mid 1990's.

Loyalty like that permeates its way into the subconscious, and then into other aspects of one's life. It has undoubtedly helped me in many tough situations, and continues to guide me in times of uncertainty. So, as it turns out, there is a perfectly logical reason to watch by beloved Redskins, no matter the situation.

If I could just learn not to whip projectiles through walls while watching them struggle, I'd really be on to something.

Evan Redmon is a manager of a public golf course in Washington, D.C. and writes a few things about stuff sometimes. Contact him at evanredmon@yahoo.com if you really want.