Bubba Explains Why Rednecks Don’t Care About Pro-Football

[Note: This is updated and slightly tweaked from an article I wrote this time last year.]

So today doesn’t necessarily bring a “sex tip” but many men in Alabama would rather watch football than actually have sex (in fact, the two aren’t mutually exclusive and probably trigger the same parts of the brain when doing both). What I’m talking about now is the strange phenomenon of people giving a shit about football that isn’t college. And I’m not talking about high school (which is totally normal for a grown man to care about way more than is healthy, since all rednecks pretty much peak in high school anyway).

As I’m sure even the French know, today is the Super Bowl. The time of year when two over-rated and over-mentioned teams join forces for a game that is boring as hell to watch and all the players give a lackluster performance because they’re scared of getting hurt. And no, I’m not talking about the Ohio State vs. Michigan game.

The Super Bowl is apparently the most watched TV program of the year. [What’s that? It’s not? Well how in the hell should I know? I just pulled that figure out of my ass.] But don’t expect rednecks to get into it, because, for whatever reason, we just don’t.

I don’t know that I’ve ever met a redneck that follows pro-football with the same ferocity he does college or even high school. He might WATCH pro games and may even muster up something like fandom for the Atlanta Falcons, but it just isn’t the same as it is watching LSU or Alabama or even, scoff, the loathsome Tennessee Volunteers. Hell, maybe part of the problem is that there aren’t a lot of pro football teams based in cities where football’s biggest fans actually live (you going tell me the San Francisco 69er’s care about football as much as Bumblefuck Alabama?) and the rural areas favored by colleges feel left out.

Let’s just be honest and say that pro games are really just for wannabe fans that give a shit only when a team starts winning a bunch (like, you know, women) and yuppies with fantasy football leagues. I like to imagine your typical pro-game watcher as your typical viewer of FX’s The League…or pretty accurate (but unknowing) carbon copies of that show’s characters.

Still, WHAT is it exactly that doesn’t inspire your diehard redneck to really get into the pro-games? There’s the tried and true argument that the passion just isn’t the same for the games (true). The less persistent but just as true argument that pro players are overpaid (true) whereas college players are basically slave labor that gets pimped out for millionaire institutions (hey, a lot like rednecks themselves!). Perhaps it’s the fact that pro players have a union and are therefore immediate targets of outward redneck scorn and internal envy. And maybe it’s just the fact that they aren’t trying to kill each other like college players often are, and rednecks can’t stand people that aren’t appropriately blood thirsty.

All of these are probably factors, or maybe it’s just that something seems to have slightly perverted our favorite sport when most people will be watching the Super Bowl only for Beyonce’s half time show and funny commercials about talking dogs. Yep, that’s probably it.