The Super What?

I grew up thinking that men invented football just to get out of doing dishes. I have seven brothers; there were a lot of dishes. And there was a mass exodus from the dining room to the living room on Sunday afternoons, so you can see how I might think that.

You can also see how, despite growing up with all those brothers, I didn’t grow up to be a sports fan myself. It’s simple. During games, there was no room for me on the couch. And, being number nine of ten, I was in no position to push anyone else off.

I’m not complaining though. When you have that many siblings, you consider a majority of them corralled in one room for extended periods of time a very good thing. A game of any kind on TV meant I could roam freely, as long as it wasn’t in front of the television.

And my brothers were occupied for a long time on Sunday afternoons. I learned early that seven minutes left in a game could mean seventeen or twenty-seven. It never meant seven. Giving the time remaining in a football game is like giving your age in dog years.

The drawback is I’m clueless about sports, and not just football, though I am pretty good at dishes—when I set my mind to it. Baseball is my favorite of all professional sports, with its long periods of peace interrupted by occasional bursts of hysteria, much like my life.

I like watching hockey, but I don’t care for the fights. I don’t see why skating 35 miles an hour and maneuvering a puck the size of a quarter pounder through all those sticks and legs isn’t enough for other fans.

I like tennis, but I don’t understand why zero is called “love.” On those rare occasions when I play tennis, I often had zero, but love is not what I’m feeling.

I like basketball. I even played it in high school for four years, though I’m no expert at it. I sat on the bench so much that, were it not for the pregame warmups, I wouldn’t even have needed to shower.

Football is the most mysterious of all sports to me. I have so many questions, the main one being why football fans say “We won” or “We lost,” when all they did was punch the couch cushions and curse the officials a few times.

This is all a very long way to explain why, whenever anyone asks me who I’ll be rooting for in the Super Bowl, I always answer the same way: "Who's playing?"

I do, however, know who is NOT playing. Having grown up in Minnesota, my husband is a Vikings fan. Still, I’m sure that come Super Bowl Sunday, he will join the hundred million or so people expected to watch the Super Bowl. I almost certainly will not, even though I have a dishwasher now and there’s plenty of room on the couch for me.

I may join him for a few minutes though. There are some things I like about Super Bowl Sunday, mainly the snacks. Sometimes I show up for the halftime show and some of the commercials are good. When a business pays a few million dollars for a 30-second advertisement, it better be good.

But what I like best about the Super Bowl is the same thing I liked about football in general when I was growing up: me time. I can come and go as I please—as long as I don’t walk in front of the television.

(Dorothy Rosby is the author of several humor books, including I Used to Think I Was Not That Bad and Then I Got to Know Me Better. Contact drosby@rushmore.com.)