BOOMERS & BEYOND: For women, football about the gathering

Oh goody! It’s football season again.

Sunday’s tranquility will soon be lost in the frenetic madness of Sunday football. “Sunday, Sweet Sunday,” (“The Flower Drum Song,” Broadway musical) a song which springs forth from me each Sunday, will now go into hibernation, along with my tulip bulbs.

Even the mention of the word “football” can cause some women to start rolling their eyes in disgust.

In defense of football … it’s not merely a game … it’s a cultural institution. Football provides a common ground for enjoyment by anyone – Republicans, Democrats, blacks, whites, rich, poor, young and old. It gives us an opportunity to gather in social settings, eat, drink and be merry. Indeed, it provides a much-needed cohesiveness to our nation like nothing else.

Why then do most women hate football? Well, being a psychology buff, I naturally have this thing well analyzed. Basically, it boils down to boy stuff and girl stuff: Girls and boys still do what we have always done. Little girls played with dolls and paraded around in Mom’s clothes and makeup, dreaming of the day they’d be grown up and could wear high heels and stockings.

All the little boys in the neighborhood, however, could be seen playing rough-and-tumble games and forever waging imaginary wars and battles. They used toy guns, squirt bottles, hoses, snowballs, rotten fruit or whatever weapon they could find, to win their battles. It was always about winning.

Now that we girls and boys have grown up, aren’t we doing the same things?

Only now, it’s the real thing. The dolls are real, and so are the battles. Women have real families and they still love clothes and makeup. Men and their buddies grew up to be soldiers – some on the battlefields of war, others on the turf of the business world.

Football is a man thing, for sure, because the cave man still lives on in men at their primal level. They have worked together in groups since early times to hunt, fight and protect their families and their colonies. Men still work together in our society, doing pretty much the same thing, in the business world, in the government and on the battlefields.

What is a football game, if not a mini war anyway? Or, perhaps a mini boardroom, where two rival factions struggle to outwit and outmaneuver each other to snatch victory for their team. It’s still about winning.

Football, like war (and like the business world) demands strategy and teamwork, plus knowledge of the opponent’s weaknesses and strengths. And successful execution of the strategy depends on the team’s physical preparation, courage and commitment, plus their skills of speed, fake-out, cunning, treachery, raw nerve and, of course, exquisite timing.

Men can relate to all that. Whereas, women cannot. How could we?

Women aren’t accustomed to working in teams; we never have. Since the beginning, we’ve worked alone, keeping the home fires burning, raising children – trying to civilize the little savages – and keeping everybody and everything squeaky clean and sweet-smelling, all the while urging them to “be careful!”

It’s still the same old story, a fight for love, or glory. Give women the love – the men will always go for the glory.

Football, with all its raucous ambiance, is a good thing. It gives us a reason to get together with our friends. One doesn’t have to like football to benefit from the hullabaloo that comes with it: the parties, the potlucks and the high energy gatherings.

“So, who won the game? So who cares,” quipped one woman I interviewed who wishes to remain anonymous. “The scene is the thing,” she shared.

She’s right. The “scene” is the thing.