American Football

This past weekend, I went to my first football game. We had decided to go because we went to an alumni event, which was a tailgate party for the Columbia vs. UPenn college football game. Apparently, Columbia has the longest losing streak in the Ivy League. Ever the optimist, I hoped that they would win, but it ended up being a pretty sad game, with neither side doing particularly well, and the end result being a contest of which was slightly less bad than the other one. The highlight of the game was the Columbia Marching Band, which performed renditions of several pop songs. A man in the stand grumbled, "I've been watching four years of this crap." His son is on the team, so he felt particularly invested. It's okay though; Columbia University excels at many things, and we simply have to accept that football is not one of them.

At the end of the game, I told my boyfriend that I wanted to watch a game in which the team I was rooting for would actually do well. That led to us buying tickets to see the Patriots play against the Jets in New Jersey. As a Bostonian, I still have an alliance to the Patriots, even though I have been living in New York for seven years.

The Patriots have been doing pretty well this season, so I was hopeful. As we walked into the stadium, they were handing out white and green pom poms for the jets fans. My boyfriend grabbed some, and my reaction was, "but we aren't Jets fans." He replied that it was okay, but when I saw the red and blue dressed patriots fan walk by, I felt like it was inappropriate so we returned them.

There seemed to be a good mix of fans in the area where we sat. The Jets started off with a three point lead, and for some reason, my boyfriend started cheering. "Stop rooting for the enemy!" I said.

At first I thought he was just going along with the crowd, but finally he turned to me and confessed, "I really hate the Patriots."

So sad, the things you begin to find out about people as you are dating them.

"What??" I said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you wouldn't have let me come to this game!" Which might be true. Apparently he (and some other people) are still mad about that whole ball deflating thing during the Super Bowl.

I briefly considered moving down to sit with a group of Patriots fans, but ended up staying where I was.

The stadium was really cold, but luckily I dressed like I would be visiting the Arctic, so I was okay. When the Jets scored a touchdown, green fireworks erupted over the stadium. "That's nice," I remarked. "Do they do that throughout the game?"

"Only when the Jets score."

Well I guess I couldn't be rooting for any fireworks anymore. I reminded myself to watch a home game next time.

Toward the fourth quarter, the Jets were leading by one point. I was unhappy, and briefly thought that I might be bad luck for the team, because every time I attend a love sports event, my team loses (granted, the only three live events I attended were Columbia University's). "This is better though," my boyfriend said, trying to cheer me up. "It would be boring if one team was just crushing the other one. Don't you think it's more interesting when it's a close game?"

"Of course not," I replied. "I prefer assured victory."

It was the 10th anniversary of the Jets "flight crew", which is what they call their cheerleaders, so there were a lot of dance performances, which were fun. Probably cold though--they were wearing their belly baring uniforms, and it was so cold there that I had snow pants on.

In the end, the Patriots won by one extra touchdown. The Jets fans were really sad, and left the stadium early.