A Super Bowl guide for the ignorant

Welcome to Wisconsin, where football is the preeminent religion, followed only by binge drinking and ice fishing. I moved here three years ago from Manhattan, where the most competitive sport is Pilates, and I’ve pretty much stuck out like a Mormon at Mecca ever since. My first week here, I was having lunch with some fellow law students and one of the cattier girls in the group said, “I HATE the Yankees,” then glanced at me with a sideways smirk, as if to see my reaction. I was like, “Uh, the Yankees… that’s, um, basketball, right? Yeah, yeah I totally hate the Yankees. And also those damn Houston Cowboys. With their big hats.” From the reactions I got around the lunch table, you’d think I’d broken out in Klingon.

Three years later I’ve managed to find a group of friends who are at least somewhat tolerant of my complete and utter disinterest in sports, although this doesn’t get me out of going to parties at their houses where football games on ten-foot t.v. screens dominate the night. Surprisingly though, the quality of the food at these parties is excellent and I’ve determined to wrangle as many invitations as possible. In my efforts to blend in and look like a football-educated kind of person, here are some handy hints I’ve learned in the last three years:

• Despite its name, the Super Bowl doesn’t actually involve bowling. You can wait around all day and you’ll never see any bowling. Don’t mention the bowling or people will laugh at you.
  
  
  
• If someone says, “Do you want to come to our Super Bowl party this weekend?” don’t ask if it’s on Saturday or Sunday. Apparently this is the equivalent of asking whether Labor Day will be held on a Monday or a Thursday.
  
  
  
• There’s a bunch of other games that end with the word “bowl.” Like the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Tostitos Bowl (I swear I’m not making that last one up). To the best of my understanding, the teams who win the most of these “bowls” go to the Super Bowl.
  
  
  
• If you win the Super Bowl, you get something called a Heisman trophy. Or maybe it’s the Stanley cup. Whichever it is, it should never be confused with the America’s cup, which pertains to horse racing and which we lost to Canada a bunch of years ago and can’t get back.
  
  
  
• The only really interesting part of a football game is the cheerleaders, but the t.v. doesn’t show them very often. I think the networks do this deliberately so we’ll keep watching with the hopes of seeing those cheerleaders. Especially the ones at USC who wear white sweaters and look so good I want to put them in my purse. Or maybe take a bath with them. Did I just say that?
  
  
  
• Apparently the New York Patriots are not a team. But my friend Robert says it’s what you’d get if the two teams playing this year had a love child.
  
  
  
• I want some pudding. Wouldn’t pudding be good right now?