2016 and 2021 AD. Two dates that may live in infamy.
There is a lot of talk regarding the extension of the NFL regular season, as the owners aren't getting enough money and the players aren't getting enough concussions. The basic idea is adding two weeks to the regular season.
Hey, that's good for me! Two more weeks of football! I can repress any thoughts about added danger to the players, or wanton greed by the owners. Yup, I'll sell all of that out for more football. If not for one thing, I'd sign off on the contract without looking at it.
That one thing is a doozy, though.
The NFL is a male-dominated game. I'm not sure if there is a female owner, but I know that there are no females involved in any sort of important decision-making process in the NFL beyond "Which cheer should we do next?" The most important woman in the NFL last season was the one who Ray Rice snuffed in that elevator. How do I know this? Let me explain.
Assuming that they grow the regular season to 18 games, and assuming that there are no exhibition games axed in the process, the Super Bowl would be two weeks later than it usually is. If they did it this year, it would fall on February 15th.
February 15th is no problem at all. February 14th? That, folks, is what we call a capital "P" Problem.
February 14th is St. Valentine's Day.
St. Valentinus was a martyr, put to death for performing marriages for soldiers in Africa during a period where Rome was persecuting Christians. There were actually several Valentinuses running around, and several were canonized. I'm sort of merging a few stories with mine. He signed his last letter (written to the blind daughter of his jailer, who he healed and who eventually underwent baptism) with a Latin version of "Your Valentine."
You can go see Valentine's skull at some Roman church, where it is preserved and venerated as a relic. It has a crown of flowers, and may be the world's prettiest skull. During the courtly love (not Courtney Love) era in the High Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer first associated the day with romance, and by the 1800s, it was pretty much a flowers/card/candy Lovers Day.
None of that is important. What is important is that the expansion of the NFL regular season by two weeks would inevitably put the Super Bowl on Valentine's Day, maybe every 5 years or so. 2015 AD is the next one, and then men are safe until 2021 AD.
Unless we get an American Pope who changes the date of a saint's feast day, we can't dodge this collision. This is the irresistible force crashing into the unmovable object.
Girls love football. Not as much as guys, but my Facebook is proof enough that a large % of girls were all worked up about the game last night (writing this after the conference championships). Several of my friends would ditch their whole family to run off with Brady or Gronk or even Chandler Jones.
I don't know who did the survey, but the Washington Post reports that women make up 45% of the 150 million football fans in America. Even the Post doesn't know how many are in Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania.... but it's a lot. An ESPN survey said 34%, but that is still 50 million plus.
Not only are the women 45% of the audience, they are the empowered 45%. Women, even these days, tend to be in charge of the household budget. Whoever is in charge of that budget is also the person you aim the advertising at. Advertising fuels the NFL.
In a house where the man watches football and the woman does something else, advertisers are in a quandary. Not only are they counting on the man being swayed by their commercials, but they are counting on him being swayed to the point where he tells the Ol' Ball and Chain about it.
Even then, they are counting on him to be able to convince her that she needs to buy a particular type of beer or pickup truck. They are also counting on him being able to do so without the bells, whistles, rock music and large breasts that commercials use to make you want to try out a particular brand of cereal.
Fortunately for places like Battle Creek and the Chevrolet plant, football is awesome. It can be tough to get a pigskin virgin into it, but once they get hooked, you own them for life. Some women love it right off the bat, while others are more like Diane Chambers from Cheers.... "Not only have I progressed to the point where I can now watch a hockey fight without covering my eyes, I even took a side once."
The NFL has ended up with a large female demographic. For instance, the NY Times has a fact of interest from a 2011 article. The top 4 shows among women, 18-49? Dancing With The Stars... Glee... Grey's Anatomy... and Sunday Night Football... and SNF beat Glee.
The NFL does do their best to drive women away. I can't imagine a female coach in my lifetime, and only the death of a billionaire will put a widow woman in charge of a team. I have secretly rooted for Oprah or Madonna to buy a team, but that's probably not going to happen. While girls do play football at lower levels, you probably won't see one in the NFL unless someone makes a Great Leap Forward.
Here's the pom-poms. Shake what Momma gave ya. We have no other role for you.
Women are not only eye candy cheerleaders in the NFL, however... they are also plaintiffs. When you get some monster who is trained to be aggressive, arguments about fidelity or the budget turn bloody, and the blood is almost always shed by the female.
Now, that 45% is a real number, but it is also a real vulnerable number. I have no idea how to gauge this, but that 45% may be the less invested 45%. I'm sure that the NFL lost some women fans during the Rice debacle, and there were 76 other cases recently where a baller got physical with his better half. At least one woman has been murdered by an NFL player in the last few years, and I may be missing a few.
Throw in an occasional serial date-rapist, a double-murderer, and a guy who hangs dogs, and that can turn off a lot of TVs.
The NFL is still winning the battle, to the tune of 45%. As we said, though, it is a fragile 45%. What the NFL can't afford to do to woman is, say, ruin their favorite holiday. That is gonna end up with a lot of motherf***ers unhappily watching Glee.
They actually have a good thing going now, with the present schedule. It empowers the woman, especially the non-fan (or, as we'll see near the end of this article, the fan who can still manipulate her husband somewhat over it). I draw power from it, and I actually like football.
We always host a Super Bowl party, I always cook enough food to feed a platoon, I mix drinks, I open beers, I ferry plates of Yummy in and out of the room, and I even do most of the cleaning after. I'm a f***ing soldier, as Kellen Winslow II once said.
I also always make a point of reminding my husband of this as Valentine's Day approaches, seeing as it is just 2 weeks after. I prefer vacations, but I'll settle for gifts. If he does a good job, he earns complete freedom for March Madness, which I don't care about.
It's win/win. The NFL, in their male-dominated thought process, fails to realize this. This failure, as failure often does, will compound itself when the owners get greedy and add 2 weeks to the season.
I'm in a bit of a moral quagmire with this issue.
I'm a woman, and I owe some debt to my gender.
I'm also a football fan, and don't want to screw over my fellow football fans.
I'm going to hand they keys to the castle to the women.
The only thing I can tell the guys reading this is some variation of "I have presented you with a potential problem, and I have even provided the dates when the problem will become catastrophic."
What you do with that information is up to you. Godspeed.
I already know how I'm going to handle this, and the answer is to Exploit My Husband's Fears. Keep in mind, I have maintained a football blog for years. I'm an easy sell. Throw in the fact that my husband, as much as I love him, is a bit of an oaf, and I'd most likely be happier watching the Super Bowl than watching him try to order in French at a nice restaurant.
(adopts deep voice)
"Yeah, I'll have one of those bif-techs, maybe some of those pommy doo terry..."
Of course, HE doesn't know that I'd prefer to watch the game, and I'd give him no clue that I feel this way. This is all part of the plan. I have the advantage, because I'm already thinking about something that won't occur to him until it's too late.
Girls, you can borrow my plan as long as you give me credit for it. What you do is wait for the NFL to expand the season, wait for the Super Bowl to fall on February 14th, and then- most imporatntly- wait for him to put two and two together regarding all of this. You want to be with him when he figures it out, because every second afterwards is time that he has to do his own scheming.
It will, in the end, come down to three critical sentences, with some body language and grunting.
"Hey, the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day."
I will not speak when he says this, but will instead stomp one foot, furrow my eyebrows, put my hands on my hips, and stare at him. Be very afraid to know that I am already practicing noises I will make when he speaks the sentence I ascribed to him above, all some variation of "Hmmmf." I will not speak until he figures out why I am doing this, and I will make him speak the critical words himself.
"This is going to be a problem, isn't it?"
Now, if he and I were fish and fisherman, this is the part of the process where I have cast my bait out to sea, the gods have moved the fish near it, and he has just bitten the piece of mackerel that I was offering... the mackerel with a big hook in it. He is at his lowest point here in the argument, and is at his most vulnerable... which is why it is then that I strike with my Finishing Move.
"I'd be willing to forego Valentine's Day and watch the Super Bowl...."
(pause, let his hopes rise)
"... in Paris!"
I will then exit the room, signifying the end of negotiations.
- Stacey
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