Dropping the ball

I’ve never managed to get into football, a fact I attribute to being short, and a girl.

But just because I lack the shoulder heft necessary to dent the turf when I’m tackled doesn’t mean I can’t play football.

I can play it. Just badly. Anyway, I avoid it for sensible medical reasons.

If I knock out any more brain cells, I’m scientifically guaranteed to go into television. I can’t take the risk.

When I say football, I mean American football. Not the European stuff, which requires actual coordination and strategy.

European football — the correct spelling is soccer — is popular pretty much everywhere but the United States.

Forget the idea that everyone else thinks it’s weird for young guys built like brick walls to bounce off each other like popcorn kernels.

It is not weird. There is a simpler explanation for why the rest of the world prefers soccer.

According to a number I made up five minutes ago and reluctantly checked on Google, the United States is inhabited by approximately 335 million people.

About half of these people are female.

The world, or as some people spell it, Earth, is inhabited by approximately 8 billion people, and ditto.

Math is hard, but stick with me for a minute. You can trust me because my cousin’s a statistician.

What this means is that on Earth, there are about 3.8 billion more females outside the U.S. than inside the U.S.

Plus, it is an incontrovertible fact that women are attracted to soccer players. Even if they (not the women) are short.

Putting these ideas together, we conclude that more people outside the U.S. prefer soccer because more people outside the U.S. are female.

I don’t commit logical fallacies. I don’t even know what they are.

The obvious way to spread interest in football is to use our shoulder heft and expand the boundaries of the United States to include more people.

The Western Hemisphere is a promising start.

But here I must stop. If I go any further, I might be forced onto television.

Let’s dive more minutely into the differences between these two sports.

There is no namby-pamby in football. An American athlete doesn’t roll all over the field when he stubs his toe against his other foot.

No, sir. The only thing we roll over is the opposing side, plus their cheerleaders.

Regardless, football is a good sport.

It kindles your blood, stirs your heart, and reddens your face as you yell at the TV for those slobs to stop fumbling when a baby could have caught that throw, for goodness’ sake.

It’s healthy, too. Thudding into other people and the ground hasn’t had any impact on my… uh… you know what I mean. The thing that makes thoughts.

Whatever. I don’t need it, anyway. Not if I go into television. Does sportscasting count?

I confess I’m not so hot on the finer details of either football or soccer. I guess I spent too much time running around the track in high school instead of flattening the grass inside it with my face.

Whichever sport it is, players just can’t seem to stay on their feet. Maybe the ground is slippery. That, or it’s a guy thing.

At least football teams have straightforward names. Whatever Basildon United is, you’re not going to see it in the NFL.

In the U.S., team names have patterns, as they should. A city and a mascot are easy to remember.

My favorites are the Los Angeles Rams, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Buffalo Wild Wings.