Teach Your Wife Football in Fifteen Minutes

The NFL football season kicks off this week. At stadiums across the country, men will be lining up with their faces painted in team colors and their voices ready to scream, cry and chant their team to victory. At the same time, in bar and grills and living rooms, men will gather to watch the definitive man event on Sundays, football. It is the rush that causes grown men to lose their shirts in hysteria and to weep uncontrollably at defeat. It is the premiere bonding event. Every man has a favorite football team. It is just unimaginable not to.

Women have favorite teams. They are called Prada and Gucci, Dooney and Burke and Donna Karan. They wear their labels on the inside while football players wear them outside. The game is about barbecues and chips, hot dogs and hamburgers. It is about watching Reggie Bush run for a touchdown or Peyton Manning throwing one long. It is about the New Orleans Saints resurrecting a city and the Indianapolis Colts resurrecting a franchise. It is about personalities like Terrell Owens and Champ Bailey, the very best at what they do, trash talking to each other in the name of football. And the best of what football has to offer is the premiere sports event held every year, the Super Bowl. There is nothing like the moment the opening kick happens. Lights and cameras flashing as a miniscule guy kicks the ball to a super fast guy at the other end of the field. It is football.

At the same time that those men will be jumping at touchdowns and cursing at mistakes the women that love them will watch without any idea of why the game is so important or the difference between a touchdown and penalty. It will be women who get blank stares from making stupid comments like why different guys have different facemasks. Women will also be the brunt of every man's ire because they want to talk when every man is sitting in the huddle of his brain, contemplating the next play, the next move, the next score. If he could get away with it, he would tell his wife, his girlfriend, his boss... just shut up!

But since that is not possible and we are trying to keep marriages together, I thought it beneficial to give every man a simple guide of the very basics of the game in order to disciple his female companion in the fundamentals of the game of football. The game is not about a ball wrapped in pigskin. It isn't about stadiums and waves. It is about the game, the offense and defense, special teams and referees. It is about throwing passes and rushing yards. But how do you teach a woman the game of football in fifteen minutes? I'm glad you asked. Here are fifteen, one-minute lessons every woman needs to know in order to understand football.

Lesson #1

The team with the football is the offense. The team without the football is the defense.

Lesson #2

The offense wants to score. The defense wants to keep the offense from scoring.

Lesson #3

The offense can score two ways, touchdowns and field goals.

Lesson #4

Touchdowns are scored by crossing the goal line. Field goals by kicking the ball through that strange looking think sticking in the ends of the field.

Lesson #5

Referees are there to make sure the players abide by the rules.

Lesson #6

Rules are made to be broken.

Lesson #7

Offenses move the ball by throwing the ball or running the ball.

Lesson #8

The offense has to gain at least 10 yards every 4 plays.

Lesson #9

When the offense fails to do that they have to kick the ball to the defense.

Lesson #10

When the defense gets the ball they become the offense.

Lesson #11

The quarterback is the coach on the field.

Lesson #12

The goal is to score more points than your opponent.

Lesson #13

An extra point happens when the offense scores a touchdown. They get a kick to receive one additional point.

Lesson #14

The game is violent because that is how you play the game.

Lesson #15

Don't ask any more questions.

Now guys listen. Every wife is not going to understand the game. Many women are not going to understand the passion. If they ask tell them it is similar to the rush they get when they shop and get a great deal on the newest pair of stilettos.

It's GameTime.