FOO BALL

I'll bet you didn't know that was two words. Without the "t." Leave it to a Southerner to explain the delicate ins and outs of language to you. Especially when it comes to that most intellectual of sports, "foo ball."

Allow me to illuminate. What you might call "football," a game with one pigskin, two teams, 22 players, a handful of oft-maligned referees, and tens of thousands of fanatics screaming in the stands (joined by millions more at home), I lovingly refer to as "foo ball." This is, of course, a word intended for oral usage. "Foo ball" fans aren't much for the written word. Unless it' s in the sports section, or comes with many, many pictures. Of women. Short of that, we "foo ball fans" lean toward verbal communication. With a decided emphasis on exclamatory words and phrases:

"Dammit!"

"No!"

"Argh!"

"Catch the ball you stupid moron!"

And so forth.

And so, beginning tomorrow night at 8:01 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, I, along with millions of my neanderthaloid brethren, will congregate once, twice, sometimes even thrice a week around the Purveyor of All Things Good and Holy (our televisions), consume ungodly amounts of beer and chicken wings (or brats, if you happen to be a Yankee), and cheer on our favorite foo ballers.

Heaven. Thank god for the fall.


Post script: my ever-so-attractive-and-understanding wife noted with total seriousness that the proper spelling may in fact be "foo baw." Maybe it's a regional thing. Dialects can be SO tricky, as my four year old would say.