Every fall, I brace myself for 1) the pumpkinization of everything remotely edible and 2) the onslaught of bro articles that "explain" football to me.
Being a girl, I'm apparently not able to survive Sundays without a cornucopia of dip recipes or 500 articles dissecting football in a "Football 101" format.
Never mind how many of us broads annually win our fantasy leagues or that we grew up watching the Bears with our dads and brothers. Never mind that women make up 45 percent of the NFL fan base and buy the majority of merchandise. We are girls, and therefore unable to understand football without it being reworked, reworded and remade into something our tiny female brains can process. Like knitting or "The Bachelorette." It's science.
So let me save you guys a lot of time, energy and angry blog comments. If you are tempted to write something with a title similar to "10 Ways to Teach Your Girl About Football" or "Ladies: 8 Ways To Survive the NFL Season," slap yourself and then go do something else. Why? Because the girls who love football will hate you for writing it and the girls who don't care about football don't care about your inane ramblings, either.
Yes, there are women who know nothing about sports and don't care to know more than nothing about sports, but that's no longer the majority of our gender and hasn't been since, like, the 1960s. Once sports and TV hooked up and made sweet, sweet love, most of us girls (especially in Chicago) have been groomed as rabid sports fans from a tender age. Don't make me bust out my "Baby's First Nacho Helmet" as proof.
There are no "male" football fans and "female" football fans. There are only football fans. We're already divided by team and city; do we need to be divided further by gender? How about by hair color? Or mother's maiden name? Where is "Fantasy Football 101 for Redheaded Gaffneys?"
I'll wait.
Julie DiCaro is a RedEye special contributor. @juliedicaro
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