{"id":20161,"date":"2015-01-29T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T08:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=20161"},"modified":"2015-01-29T00:01:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T08:01:56","slug":"superbowl-my-guys-are-talking-sports-and-all-is-right-with-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/superbowl-my-guys-are-talking-sports-and-all-is-right-with-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Superbowl: My Guys Are Talking Sports — And All Is Right With the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"nfl<\/a>
On our TV: Last Sunday’s Superbowl play-off, Seattle and Greenbay.\u00a0<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s January, 2015, and another Superbowl is coming up. Son Peter is\u00a034 now and \u00a0he lives in the faraway Midwest. But as always, whenever\u00a0he and Jon get together, father and son, in person, on the phone or on Skype, sure enough, the subject turns to sports — football, baseball, basketball.<\/p>\n

I like listening\u00a0to the two of them talk. I can’t keep up with the intricacies of a sports conversation, but I like eavesdropping on\u00a0the comfortable, father-son tone: My guys\u00a0are talking sports and all is right with the world.<\/p>\n

Here’s a story I wrote about men, boys and sports — way back in 1989:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
A primal need . . . ? \u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, January 22, 1989<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There is something about a man that needs football.\u00a0I don\u2019t get it. I have never gotten it. But, I accept it.<\/p>\n

I like the men in my life. And if football \u2013 along with baseball and basketball \u2013 has shaped them into the people they are, then football and its pleasures can\u2019t be all bad.<\/p>\n

Indeed, on a good day, I too take time out to thrill to the 61-yard, Joe Montana-Jerry Rice touchdown pass.<\/p>\n

(A good day is the day the Christmas ornaments are put away, the dishwasher is up and running, and the leaky roof is fixed. Today is not a good day.)<\/p>\n

Some primal need is being met in Miami today, as 75,000 spectators gather for Super Bowl XXIII.<\/p>\n

Just what that primal need is, I do not know. Perhaps the popular understanding is correct \u2013 that sports<\/a> are a healthy sublimation of the male homo sapiens\u2019<\/a> profoundly bloodthirsty nature.<\/p>\n

\"Six-year-olds<\/a>
. . . shared by the female of the species?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And perhaps it\u2019s also true that that sublimation is as essential to the survival of humanity as a man\u2019s very willingness to stand and fight. There is little room, we keep telling ourselves in this post-Vietnam, post-Hiroshima era, for all-out war.<\/p>\n

But there is plenty of room for the quasi-violent \u2013 for blindsiding the quarterback, for beanballs, high sticking and getting rough under the boards.<\/p>\n

There is room in our culture for Muhammad Ali and Bill Walsh. And apparently there is also room for Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.<\/p>\n

But are war, blood lust and football really the special province of men? Are women and men all that different?<\/p>\n

A woman is fully capable of climbing onto a stadium bench and yelling \u201cCrush \u2019em!” I\u2019ve seen it done.<\/p>\n

So are girls.<\/p>\n

\u201cKill the Bears!\u201d the demure, 5-year-old Christina<\/a> was heard to exclaim on the afternoon of Jan. 8.<\/p>\n

And, too, we are finding out that the male and the female brain are not as different as some people used to think.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s children are closing the test-score gap. Girls are getting better at math. Boys are getting better at reading, writing \u2013 and presumable talking.<\/p>\n

But it seems whenever I am tempted to draw a tidy conclusion about the homogeneity of the human species, I am confronted by the raw maleness of my 8-year-old son<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The baseball card collection.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His teacher and I were trying to have a quick after-school chat last week. But Peter had a different agenda.<\/p>\n

He lowered his flat-topped head into a battering ram and greeted me with a joyful blow to the stomach. Then, for good measure, he pressed me up against the schoolyard fence.<\/p>\n

I staggered. I embraced and stroked his dear, bristly head and told myself that boys will be boys. I flexed my abdominals.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice for Jon that we have a son. Peter is growing up developmentally speaking, he now has what it takes to memorize his times tables and to play a game of Monopoly.<\/p>\n

That means that Peter also has what it takes to sit in front of the TV for the better part of a quarter.<\/p>\n

With great care, Jon has initiated our son into the mysteries of football. Peter can now sling football words with the same ease he hands off a Nerf football. Stuff like \u201cthird and three\u201d and \u201cquarterback sneak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter also collects football cards. He arranges and rearranges them into meaningful stacks on his bedroom floor \u2013 on the very spot where He-Man once stood off the Evil Horde.<\/p>\n

This is nice for Jon<\/p>\n

Now, when the baseball Giants blow it in the ninth, or the Niners collapse in the fourth, Jon can talk it over with Peter.<\/p>\n

There are two to shout invectives at the officials. Two to wail at the unfairness of it all, the glory<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Family event: A Warriors game at the stadium. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

of it all, the rotten disappointment of it all. They console each other in defeat, and exchange high fives in victory.<\/p>\n

For the rest of their lives, Jon and Peter will never be at a loss for words in each other\u2019s company. There will always be football. And baseball. And basketball.<\/p>\n

Some things will be too personal to discuss\u2014their marriages, their career disappointments, the existential loneliness of it all.<\/p>\n

There will be injuries that words cannot fix.<\/p>\n

But no matter. There will always be football.<\/p>\n

\"TV<\/a>
Seattle meets Green Bay in our den.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a91989 The Oakland Tribune<\/a>, Reprinted by Permission<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently, my Oakland Tribune colleague, Martin Snapp, got wind of my intention to rib the male half of the species with this column about father and son sports talk.<\/p>\n

His column faced mine each week on the front page of the Trib’s Sunday Lifestyle section. Here’s what he wrote on Jan. 22, the day my riff on football ran:<\/p>\n

“Barbara Newhall accuses us men of using sports as a male bonding ritual. And you know what? She’s right. As the Miami Herald’s Dave Barry once wrote, ‘Men can never really trust women because they know in their hearts that a woman, given the choice between hitting a home run or saving a drowing child, will choose saving the child–without even asking whether there are men on base!'”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"nfl<\/a><\/p>\n

I like listening to my husband and son talk\u00a0about football and basketball. I like the comfortable, father-son tone: My guys are talking sports and all is right with the world. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1353,146,34,107,29,1354,363,55,82,56,1355],"class_list":["post-20161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-boys","tag-christina","tag-dont-miss","tag-girls","tag-jon","tag-lifestyle","tag-men","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-peter","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}