Football Dad

Larry wrote about sports today so, me, too.

I’m still clinging to the thread of hope that Steelers will win the rest of their games and make the playoffs this year; it’s a mathematical possibility, if not a very likely one.

I take today’s game against the hated Brownies as a metaphor for the entire season: a dismal first half, atoned for in the second, as the boys in Black n' Gold stage a miraculous fourth quarter comeback, scoring the winning touchdown on an improvised shovel pass from Roethlisberger to Willie Parker with forty seconds left to play.

I’m embarrassed to admit I did the classic football dad thing: the whole family and our houseguests were waiting on me to take a much-needed stroll around neighborhood, and even after holding them up for “one more play” for fifteen minutes, I ultimately let them leave without me, pacing around the house until the game was finally over—on the last play when the defense managed to knock aside a Hail Mary pass from the Brownies QB.

A few times already this season, I’ve tried the alternative approach, leaving to perform parental and/or spousal duties while the game hung in the balance, thinking that this would appease the football gods and secure a Pittsburgh victory, but by and large, that hasn’t worked. Maybe all along they weren’t testing my mettle as a husband and father, but rather as a committed fan.

More likely, (hard as it is to believe) my behavior has nothing to do with whether the Pittsburgh Steelers win or not.

There. I’ve said it.

I know that my belief in any sort of connection is entirely a product of what philosophers call the “post hoc” fallacy—seeing cause and effect between events that are merely correlated, like thinking the sacrificed sheep makes the rains come.

Just to be on the safe side, though, for the Ravens game next week, I’m crashed on the couch drinking beer.