I Heart the 9ers: or How I’ve Been Converted to Pure Religion

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have finally been inducted to a very elite group of people. We are 100 million strong. We are vehement and volatile, and we will win. We are football nation!

For the first time ever, I sat in the cathedral of worship and cheered my saints on as they did battle against the forces of evil (otherwise known as Brett Favre). For the first time ever, I understood what it meant to scream and be heard because after all these years the TV still doesn’t listen. I learned about the most powerful man on the field; the TV network guy with the orange gloves that tells everyone when they can and can’t play. I learned that from the 30 yard line everything looks better and make a whole helluva lot more sense than watching a very limited perspective on Fox. I learned why people throw their hearts and souls into this. But most importantly, I’ve learned that I still like the bratwursts at the Giants' stadium better.

So here is me, eating my words. Football is not as slow as it seems on TV. The hits really do seem that hard especially when you hear it from 100 feet up. Those guys work their butts off. And yes, football is fun to watch.

There is something to be said about a stadium full of people all united in a single cause: winning. Whether it be our team or theirs makes no difference. What counts it that we’re there cheering our boys on in fighting the good fight, even if that means grown men to strip down to their purple boxers to prove a point. We’re in it to win it.

At the core, football nation is fundamentally the definition of pure religion. There is absolute devotion. There are a set of beliefs and practices that are agreed upon by a number of people. And the groups of adherers practice the faith every Sat, Sun, Mon, etc. from now until early February. They never waiver and they don’t switch sides. That would be heresy. And while the sacrilege of worshipping the almighty pigskin rather than the Almighty offends most, you have to realize that football nation is probably more fervent in their prayers than the rest of us. How, you ask? Because while we only devote one day to worship and take the rest of the week off, even in the off-season they’re wishing and hoping that next year perhaps they’ll be the ones to be exalted.