This all started last week when I went downtown to meet my friend for dinner. She and I met at “the agency” many years ago. She was doomed from the moment she signed the confidentiality agreement, as was I. I drank too much and became almost allergic to the sound of a human voice. She gained a lot of weight and dropped out of her band and started smoking pot every night so she could get some sleep. We got along quite well.
She works downtown now – a huge improvement all on its own, I think – in an office that’s not quite as delusional. “It’s not a cult like ‘the agency’ was,” she said. “People almost always leave at 5:30 and when I ride the bus home I just look out the window. It’s great.” She sipped her beer thoughtfully, then continued. “But they do like to talk about college football. A lot. My manager even talks about the Ducks during team meetings, which is really weird.” A lot of ranting followed. Then, she said that she sometimes felt guilty for not riding along on the tide of team spirit, like she’s an elitist of some sort. To which I said, loud enough for the people at the next table to pause, “For now at least you are not required to apologize for not being stupid.” That was probably not a wise move on my part, considering we were sitting in a sports bar.
I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a few years. On the afternoons that the Badgers played at Camp Randall, if you weren’t a fan of brute force it was best to stay home. There were brawls and litter and barf in the streets and assaults galore and on and on. But that was in a college town where something along the lines of 50,000 college students lived and drank. Mayhem was to be expected.
This, on the other hand, is Portland, Oregon. This metropolis is home, I believe, to close to 1 million souls. We’re known, from what I read, for sustainability, for renewable energy, for reasonable, informed urban planning, for public transportation, for citizen involvement, for our appreciation, though often piously expressed, of the earth and all its wonders. And apparently we are striving to be known for college football. At ‘the agency’ there were so many company-wide e-mails going around about the finer points of the Ducks-Beavs rivalry that the CEO ordered the college football crowd to set up its own distribution list. (I must say I was impressed when I heard that about the CEO, the last person I’d expect to take a stand against college football: when she asked me once where I was from and I told her Missouri, she said, “Oh, you’re a Tiger!”) College football jokes and barbs and all-around stupid comments are on the news here. I am not kidding: the news. If an anchor or reporter wears green or yellow or orange there will be – and you can bet on this – an onslaught of stupid remarks. About the same time the leaves begin to turn and the mornings chill, I start to see a lot of cars around town – by that I mean Portland – decked out with college football flags, a horrific sight, one that reminds me of paintings from the history textbooks of my youth of the patriots headed off to fight in the American Revolution. Last week someone posted on Facebook that some fat ass had made some national business magazine's top 10 list about the biggest this or most that. The rah rah commenced immediately, and here’s the one that best summed up the prevailing sentiment: Another Duck under the radar! The guy is niether under the radar nor a Duck, but remember, this is college football blather, so it's best to skip the technicalities. And last year came the news that not only are football players more prone to brain damage (I was shocked, personally) but also that many children in Oregon believe the term Civil War refers not to the battle over slavery but the game between the Ducks and the Beavs. That’s encouraging, I think: contrary to what we’ve heard about technology making automatons of today’s youngsters, here in Oregon the little ones are paying close attention to their elders.
While it is certainly fun to dismiss all the college football fanatics as stupid, I know it’s also wrong, so I had to think about my kneejerk comment. I know that there are thoughtful people cheering in the stands all across the land, and in sports bars, and in living rooms. It’s the forcing of the football foolishness into the daily conversation that infuriates me. And I do think, elitist though it may be, that when adults – adults – bray and chant and deck their cars out with flags and manage to reference ‘their’ team in every conversation, even if they’re news anchors on network affiliates in ‘major markets’ (Portland, for instance) and if, especially if, 15, 20 years and anywhere from 50 to 200 pounds beyond their college years, assuming they went to college, people continue to not only identify with ‘their’ team but to introduce themselves as a Duck or a Beaver or perhaps a Coug, and then, with absolutely no indication from me that I am even remotely interested in talking about football, go right ahead and ask me, What are you?, when all those if’s align, I think that asking after the particulars of the IQ is, pardon the pun, fair game.
