Battle of the Sexes: Can women be true football fans?
As I sat on the couch last Saturday evening watching the Redskins playoff game, something about the atmosphere didn’t seem quite right.
Maybe it was the crab dip I just devoured or the flat Ginger Ale I drank. Or maybe it was the strange scenario I thought of, featuring two men sipping Sangria and discussing cooking recipes while a group of women crowded around the pork rinds and yelled obscenities at the television.
Have times really changed? Have females truly become die-hard fans of the gridiron? All I can say about this new phenomenon is: Hell yes, they have. According to Yahoo Sports, 16 percent of the NFL fan base was female in 2006.
The total was even higher in classic football towns such as Green Bay and Pittsburgh where female fan totals reached 29.4 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
In Pittsburgh, female fans have become such a force that the team opened a simulated mini-camp that more than 300 women attend each summer.
Sundays used to be a time for us men to gather around the tube, watch the game and throw back some beers, while spending a few precious hours away from the women in our lives.
When game time rolled around, we could get away from hearing which uniform looked prettier, whose butt was cuter, and other such feminine inquiries that we simply could not stand to listen to.
Those traditional game days are a thing of the past. More men are finding themselves surrounded by those they were trying to get away from.
I’ve witnessed this miraculous change with my own eyes. The women in my family have become legitimate fanatics; from my Dallas-Cowboys-loving little sister, to my mother who loses her voice each weekend over Eli Manning’s performance.
I thought maybe my family was different (possibly cooler than yours), but recent discoveries have brought me to the realization that more females have truly become football fans.
I’m sorry if you were looking for an intense argument concerning the supremacy of men over women in the world of sports. Women have adapted to football and football has adapted to them.
Now on Sundays both men and women can sit together and enjoy the game without having to worry about whose butt looked tighter.
Sean Youngberg is a sophomore SMAD major.
As Super Bowl season approaches, it’s time for fair-weather football fans to emerge from the dust and start cheering alongside those of us who have stuck it out all season, dropping names like Tony Romo and terms like “wild card” to join the conversation. Many of these fans are women, and unfortunately they give us true female football fanatics a bad rap.
We’re all accustomed to the depiction of women as chatterboxes who interrupt the world of the NFL with gossip or giggles. Most of us remember the beer commercial a few years back where a woman changed the channel to ice-skating in the middle of a big game, much to the dismay of her annoyed boyfriend.
Unfortunately, these stereotypes are often confirmed in the real world. I’ve been to Super Bowl parties where female partygoers were braiding hair right in front of the TV. Too many times I’ve heard from women, “Oh I love [insert team]!...wait, what’s a first down?” Of course, these women have no obligation to like football, and if they’d rather braid hair they have every right to do so.
The problem is that these types of female fans misrepresent a good chunk of us women who absolutely love football. I, for one, consider myself a die-hard through and through. I knew all the words to “Hail to the Redskins” by age three, and my Sunday mood is often dependent on whether or not the ’Skins earn a victory. I have female friends who run their own fantasy football leagues, and I guarantee that any man would be impressed by their ability to analyze team stats before they pick their starting lineups every week.
Men’s and women’s minds often work differently when it comes to sports, and we don’t always match the way we demonstrate our love for a team. When my fiancé and I go to Redskins games, he prefers to analyze the strategy behind the plays, while I like to scream so loudly I lose my voice. He understands play calling better than I do, but just because we get different kinds of enjoyment from watching football doesn’t mean I’m less of a fan.
Despite the stereotypes, there are plenty of true female football fanatics out there—and if you’d like to challenge me on that, I’ll argue with you once I get my voice back.
Kathryn Manning is a senior history and political science major.
