Are You Ready for Some Fooooootball?????

To date, I haven't spent a whole lot of time on this blog writing about football--largely because so far this blog has existed solely in the off-season. But for better or worse, my guess is that that's about to change--because for those of you who don't know, football season is right around the corner: training camps have already begun and before you know it the air will be filled with the glorious sounds of helmet on helmet collisions, images of botched snaps, and the promise of Saturday and Sunday afternoons spent glued to our 32 inch flat screen TV--newpaper in one hand, a cold beer in the other.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself: Hey! I thought this blog was about race, gender, politics and media? I thought it was written by a young, progressive gay woman. Well, all of that is true--and so is this: I love football. It's a very recent passion of mine, and one which, from time to time, gives me pause, too. How to reconcile who my politics might tell you am, with what my heart and gut tell me I love. But you know, sometimes life doesn't line up all nice and neat like it does in the movies. Sometimes you are a card carrying feminist, activist, demonstrator who also loves the strategy, the camaraderie, the gut grinding physicality of our nation's most profitable sport. What else can I say?

Anyway, living in New York as I do, I seem to have staked my fan-ship to a certain group of sometimes bumbling Giants... the ones Tiki Barber just left behind for television stardom... the ones now destined to be lead by one emotionless, under-performing, sad-faced little brother named Eli Manning. And this has me worried, y'all. The Giants were 8-8 last year, with the E. Man throwing 35 interceptions (that a LOT--2nd highest in NFL), and the worst part is, there's no indication they'll be any better this year.

I really want to like Eli--really, I do. But I also want him to have a lower interception rate than say... oh... I WOULD if they threw me in the game and put Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Pace and a few other big dudes in there to block for me (and shrunk the field by 75 yards). It's going to be a long, sad fall, my friends--I can feel it in my bones.