The headline is probably un-American sacrilege or whatever. Brand me a heretic, a blasphemer. Tar and feather me with hate.
C’est la vie.
But let me get this caveat out of the way upfront: I enjoy sports. Having not owned a television myself in literal decades and having lived outside of the U.S. for almost as long, I was forced to watch the highlights on the internet, but the UGA vs. Bama SEC championship game, for example, was pretty great. My Ukrainian wife doesn’t care a lick about any sports — let alone American football that literally no one not North American patronizes — and often tells me it’s weird that I’m into it. Such is the burden of international cross-cultural marriage.
Having established my affinity for sports, fully developed men in middle age whose entire identities seem to revolve around their favorite football team appear to have something developmentally wrong with them.
There’s an entire genre of TV/talk radio featuring adult men with receding hairlines fervently discussing (sometimes screaming) their football opinions into the camera, as if they’re delivering an impassioned Pentecostal sermon on the damnation of hellfire or some other such heady existential issue of eternal life or death.