Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Oct. 31, 2011

It helps if you get closer to the screen

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Yesterday my wife and I were watching TV, when something happened that reminded me of an old Facebook post I’d read.

I remember just when it was I read that post, because it was the day when Auburn suffered their first loss of the season at the hands of Clemson. During the game I’d advised Auburn quarterback Barrett Trotter to use the old Statue of Liberty play, and slip the ball behind his back to Michael Dyer. It was an excellent idea, and I shouted “STATUE OF LIBERTY” several times. Unfortunately, Trotter completely ignored my advice, dropped back and threw the ball into the hands of a Clemson defender. Then I shouted something else at the TV. I did a lot of shouting that afternoon.

Later that evening I was sitting in my recliner, still replaying that game in my mind and muttering things like: “They wouldn’t listen to me, would they? Did I say pass? NOOO, I SAID RUN THE BALL!”

“What did you say?” Marilyn asked.

“I SAID RUN THE BALL! They had the ball on the Clemson 8-YARD LINE, for Pete’s sake!” Then I said another bad word.

“You should read this,” Marilyn said. “Becky posted a ‘question of the day’ on Facebook.” Becky is our niece, and she sometimes posts rhetorical questions on her Facebook site. So I read it.

Yesterday I found Becky’s old Facebook post, just to remind myself of how wrong a person, or a group of persons, particularly female persons, can be.

The question of the day asked why it was that men shouted at the television set during football games, when neither the coach, nor the refs, nor the players, nor any of the other little people inside the TV set, could hear them? There was a long list of comments following that post, most of them from married women who were more than happy to report that their husbands were cretins.

One said her husband would clap his hands and shout “THERE YOU GO, THERE YOU GO!” after an impressive defensive play, and then walk up to the TV set and cock his head sideways to see if he could locate the guy on the bottom of the pile and read the name on his jersey. This always made her laugh.

Some women said that they hollered at the TV set, too, but most agreed that the shouting at the TV set syndrome was basically a male disorder. Some attributed it to beer, and others to men’s lack of any real knowledge as to just how television actually works. “He really thinks they can hear him,” one said. “I mean, they’re ON TV!” another complained.

My wife said it was a chromosomal defect, and later told me she believed that shouting at televised football games was a conditioned response, much the way Pavlov’s dogs learned to drool every time they heard a bell. She felt it had something to do with those yellow flags the referees were always throwing around. It was a silly theory, given the fact that I never drool during football games. Not without a bowl of Cheetos nearby.

The consensus was that men are simply subnormal, mentally. Niece Becky, who can be perceptive when she tries, gave up trying and actually said watching her husband during a televised football game was like watching a “monkey documentary on PBS.” Then she added something or other about how you’d never hear a woman shouting that the judges were blind, or screaming “FOUL! LATE HIT! FACEMASK INFRACTION!!” during the Miss America Pageant.

Men, according to the ladies on that Facebook site, lack the maturity to sit quietly and watch football without becoming emotionally involved. They’d argue that since many of us, well into our sixties, still enjoy watching the Three Stooges, we are not truly intelligent creatures. They neglect to mention, however, the fact that we only watch the Stooges when Curly is part of the trio. Not one man in a thousand would waste his time watching a Stooge episode featuring Shemp or Joe Besser. But when you explain that to a woman, she will invariably snort and act as though Curly, Shemp, and Joe were all interchangeable.

So that particular Facebook post stuck in my mind because it was patently unfair. We men, those of us who holler at televised sporting events, are not morons. We know that the little people inside the TV set cannot hear us. They are encased in metal and plastic, and the crowd noise inside that TV set is very intense. But we also know that on certain rare occasions, due to some freak atmospheric phenomenon which reverses the magnetic field around our satellite dish, the little helmeted people inside the TV set actually get the message, follow our instructions and run the proper play. And when they do, the results are positive. Yardage-wise. Almost always.

But what brought all of this Facebook stuff to mind was that yesterday, my wife pointed at the TV and shouted “ARE YOU NUTS? HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE?”

“Say what, dear?” I asked.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she replied. “I was talking to those idiots at that clothing store. They’re advertising this special sale where if you buy any suit in the store, you GET ANOTHER ONE FREE!”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Only if you don’t mind paying twice as much for the original suit! LISTEN, THERE THEY GO AGAIN! They must think we’re imbeciles!”

So men holler at televised football games, and women holler at commercials. I realize that women believe they’ve climbed much higher on the evolutionary ladder than men, but I’d hasten to point out that while yes, we may indeed attempt to pass along valuable strategic advice to our favorite football teams, THOSE GAMES ARE LIVE! We do not argue with commercials which were taped months, even years, earlier.

We men have evolved the ability to watch commercials without really watching them at all. We tune out, mentally, when the commercials appear on the screen. Unless, of course, they are the Go Daddy commercials with the scantily clad girls promising they’ll show us more at the Go Daddy website (I’ve visited that website, and they never do).