Learning to hate football

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000

On the evening of Oct. 22, 2001, I found myself riding around a bar in New York’s East Village on the back of a gentleman I’d met only a few hours before. It was the final minutes of a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants. Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb connected with James Thrash for a touchdown putting the Eagles ahead of the Giants 10-9; the score would hold and the Eagles would win the game. The gentleman was the only other Philadelphian and Eagles fan in the bar and the minute I saw the official's arms go up and signal touchdown I leapt on that guy’s back and he gave me the craziest piggyback ride I’ve ever had. He had surprisingly strong legs and he used them to run all over that New York City bar while we sang the Eagles fight song in front of the assembled Giants fans.

We only stopped when a large security guard came over and said, “All right, you boys have had your fun, now knock that gay shit off.”

During the course of that game I must have eaten about 30 chicken wings, smoked a pack of cigarettes and had about 12 to 80 beers. I spent three hours giving in to some of my most hedonistic impulses in an effort to ease the delicious torture of a close football game, and the payoff was a euphoric two-minute victory lap in hostile territory on the back of a stranger.

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Learning to hate football