My cousin Jim doesn't think like this. He just loves the Jets. He has season tickets, even though he lives in Chicago. He keeps a green jersey in the trunk of his car, just in case a Jets pep rally breaks out. He once tried to buy Fireman Ed a beer at the Meadowlands. (Ed said no; he needed to stay focused on the game.) If Jim were stranded on a deserted island for 30 years and a rescue boat finally came, after the rescuers had treated his sunburn and poured cool water down his throat he'd ask them: How are the Jets doing?
But seven years ago Jim found a soul mate to rival Ed: Colleen. So on a sparkling autumn Sunday, Jim made the ultimate gesture of love. Though the Jets were hosting Jacksonville, he agreed to drive Colleen all the way the hell out to Wapella, Ill., in the middle of the cornfields, to meet her folks.
I remember the first time he told me this story. I could just imagine his stoic face as he made super-polite small talk with Colleen's mom, dad, sibs as he looked through old photos, petted the family dog, ate the waffles or scrambled eggs -- all the while darting furtive glances at the TV. The Jets weren't on, of course. In Illinois farm country it was the Bears. But every few minutes the screen flashed the out-of-town scores, and Jim saw that his Jets were locked in a nail-biter. Nursing a one-point lead. Third quarter.
Finally he couldn't take it anymore. Like a twitchy junkie he leaped up and announced he forgot something in the car, he'd be right back. Moments later, hunched behind the wheel, he tuned in the feed from New Jersey. (Do I need to say that Jim subscribes to NFL Radio?) The situation, he learned, was dire. Chad Pennington, shoulder injury, return questionable. Grabbing the Pennington jersey from the trunk, Jim sealed the car windows, cranked the volume and pumped his fist as Pennington's backup, Jay Fiedler, came on.
What the --? Suddenly the announcer said Fiedler was down too, making snow angels on the snowless turf. Just then Jim looked up. He saw Colleen's sweet mom peering through the farmhouse window. He'd lost all track of time. Had he been gone 10 minutes? Half an hour? As he and Fiedler struggled to recover (return questionable), Jim saw what Colleen's mom saw, what anyone would have seen. A grown man in a bright green smock, sitting alone in a car that sways with the vehemence of his pounding and cursing. Clearly Colleen's mom was wondering, as anyone would have, what sort of disorder afflicted her future son-in-law.
It's the same disorder that afflicts tens of millions of Americans. Maybe Jim suffers from a more virulent strain. Maybe not. Football simply has an iron grip on our collective psyche, to the extent that America has a collective psyche anymore. We love it. God help us, we love it.
We always have, going back 143 years, ish, to when it was nothing but a scrum of sweatered Ivy Leaguers, a mosh pit of privileged brats. The depth of our love, however, the irrational ferocity of it, has grown steadily, exuberantly, until now, in post-Ivy, post-9/11, postmodern, post-American America, we love football to distraction. We love it to the tune of $9 billion per annum. (That's just the pros.)
And yet, as with so many relationships, we quietly tell our friends: It's complicated.
by J.R. Moehringer, ESPN | Read more:
Photo: Dominic Disaia
