Who Dat?

It's Carnival season here in south Louisiana. Three Mardi Gras parades in Baton Rouge today and of course several in and around New Orleans--all building up to the frenzy of next weekend and the final explosion on Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Day itself. But this year, even Mardi Gras has been swallowed up by a region-wide celebration of breath-taking, mind-boggling intensity: tomorrow, as any sentient American knows, the New Orleans Saints play the Indianapolis Colts in the Superbowl.

I don't do football. I don't get football. But I'll join the party. A party's a party. But this party--this party crosses racial and class divides and in south Louisiana, that's extraordinary.

Still, it's football. I didn't grow up with football. My high school didn't have a football team. My college didn't have a football team. My dad didn't follow football. My brothers didn't play football. They didn't watch football, at least not when they were kids (tho', sadly, they caught the virus in adulthood).

And football is so unelegant, so just plain ugly. Keith says I don't see the beauty of football because I don't understand it. I disagree. I don't really understand soccer (football, actually, at least to the rest of the world), but there's a beauty to the game. I see that. I'm a Chicago Cubs fan, but I'm not one of those baseball academics who explores the mathematics of the game. I just think a hotdog and a beer in Wrigley Field on a spring day is a transcendental experience. And I see the beauty in the game, even if I don't grasp the math. Tennis. I still don't get what it means to break the serve, but an elegant volley is an elegant volley. I get that.

Football. Guy throws oddly shaped ball. Bunch of guys make a big guy pile. Repeat.

But. . .

Those guys do wear really lovely form-fitting uniform bottoms that show off a finely-honed male ass to great advantage--unlike all other athletic uniforms for men. While women's sports apparel gets ever skimpier, the guys slog around in ever-baggier sacks. Basketball players used to wear the cutest bum-hugging little shorts; now they wear gigantic. knee-brushing drapes inspired by skateboarding kids circa 1992. While female tennis players sport midriff-bearing, cleavage-revealing, upper-arm-enhancing little lycra pantydresses, the guys schlep around in what appear to be their grandpas' boxers. But in football, well, there might not be much beauty in the game, but there's often beauty in the butts.

So, I'll go to the party. Watch the commercials. Sing along with the Who. And admire the tight ends.