I spent part of the holiday with my sister Janelle who lives in Pasadena, California – home of the Rose Bowl and the Tournament of Roses Parade. We walked around on New Year’s Eve looking at the floats lined up on Orange Grove Boulevard, then on New Year’s Day we did what most veteran residents of Pasadena do – we stayed at home and watched the Rose Bowl on TV. Only my niece Rosalie and her friends hiked 2 miles over to the Rose Bowl to attend the game in person. Rosalie took her temporary allegiance to the Wisconsin Badgers seriously and became a Cheesehead for a day.

I was anxious to get the bad taste of the Orange Bowl out of my mouth (recall that the Virginia Cavaliers lost to Florida 36-28) so I tuned Janelle’s enormous wall TV, that disguises itself as a painting when not in use, to the Rose Bowl. The game got good really quickly and I urged Janelle to sit down and watch with me. “I couldn’t care less about football,” she said, and I was instantly awash in sentimental appreciation that my big sister knows better than to say, “I could care less about football.” She proudly explained that she doesn’t know the first thing about football, which struck me as being like someone saying they don’t know how to use an elevator or flush a toilet, although with all of the automatic flushing toilets around, I predict that it won’t be long before people can’t remember how to flush.

Other than their brief flirtations with cheerleading in the 8th grade, neither of my sisters has ever had much interest in team sports. For the record, I was not a cheerleader because one couldn’t be a cheerleader and also take piano lessons. You see, this was back in the days when kids only got to do one extracurricular thing and there was no soccer on Saturdays. I assure you, I have never regretted choosing to be able to play the piano over learning how to artfully shake pompoms. In spite of their cheerleader training, or perhaps because of it, both of my sisters think football is stupid and deduce that the people who play it must also be. Obviously, no intelligent person would subject themselves to abuse and concussions when they could stay at home and read The Complete Works of the Bronte Sisters. My sister Janelle only watches sports that one attends in person whilst wearing a hat. Since she wouldn’t be caught dead with a big block of cheese on her head, that pretty much limits her sports repertoire to horse shows and thoroughbred racing. Notice, in this picture of my family on a racing outing, both of my sisters are wearing hats. My big problem with hats has always been the hat head that accompanies them so I, like my mother, never wore a hat to the races. Needless to say, people don’t wear hats like these to football games:

Left to right: Youngest, Middle, Oldest, aka, Me, Norah, Janelle.

Anyway, back on New Year’s Day, I explained to Janelle that, if she understood the rules of football, it would make watching a game much more interesting. I implored her to sit down and watch, promising to explain the game in a way she could understand. My explanation was simplistic but effective, so if any of you have beloved relatives who think The Patriots are a right-wing PAC and the Ravens are cult followers of Edgar Allan Poe, feel free to share my guide with them.

THE POSITIONS

I explained that the guy who is squatting with his hands on the ball is the Center and the guy who has his hands on that guy’s ass is the Quarterback, and I didn’t so much as snicker when she asked if that’s the position Tom Brady plays. I explained that all the other players are like the pieces on a chess board, in that they are all there to protect the queen who, in this case is the quarterback, and they all have different skills and ways of moving. The only difference is that, when these pieces are knocked out, you can pull out fresh pieces to replace them. Very expensive fresh pieces. The team with the quarterback is currently “on OFF-ense.” The guys on the other team (the DE-fense) are the opposition and they all want to be sure the quarterback and his minions don’t reach their goal.

THE GOAL

So what is the goal? Football is easy to understand if you think of it as an amalgamation of the games we played when we were children. The team that has the ball has long term and short term goals. The long term goal is to get the ball to the other end of the field. It’s like Red Rover with life-threatening injuries. They will reach the long term goal by accomplishing a bunch of short term goals. The short term goal is to move ahead in blocks of 10 yards, to the magic yellow line that only those of us who stay home to watch can see. It’s like Mother May I, only no one on the team that is trying to go forward is planning to ask for permission. The team with the ball gets four tries to get the ball across the magic yellow line. If they don’t make it, they have to give the ball to the other team. If they do make it, the short term goal is reset and the number of tries goes back to zero. This is repeated over and over again until the team on offense makes it to the end of the field, or kicks the ball between the tines of the big forky-thing.

METHOD OF PLAY

Sometimes when the Quarterback gets the ball, he fakes like he gives it to someone, then actually gives it to someone else, or keeps it himself. This is like Button, button, who has the button? But the quarterback’s team knows who has the button and knows what they plan to do with the button because they have practiced it all before and have memorized the plans, which are called “plays.” It’s really important that the person who has the button not DROP the button because if they do, anyone gets to pick it up. If you drop the button, all of your team mates as well as all the people wearing cheese on their heads will hate you. Because whoever has the button gets to try to score and you can only score if you have the button. So you see? Football players really aren’t as stupid as you think they are, what with all that memorizing. They just memorize plays instead of who painted what picture in what year, or who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Admittedly, most of them probably didn’t score as high on their SATs as you did, but that is not a criterion for admission to the NFL. Besides, the number of millions of dollars in their bank accounts beats your SAT score by a lot.

THE PUNT

If the team that has the ball (remember, that’s the button) doesn’t get to the magic yellow line by the fourth try they usually use their last try to put the ball as far away as possible so that the other team has a really long way to go to reach their goal. This is a Nah-nah-nee-boo-boo play, like when Momma would make you give me a toy and you would say, “Fine - have it,” but then put it up high so I couldn’t reach it. A guy who used to play soccer but decided it is way more fun to play a sport that people actually come out to watch, kicks the ball to the other end of the field, and the players on the other team all run around trying to be the one to catch the ball. If the kicked ball crosses the line at the other end of the field, the kicking team DOES NOT score. A team only scores when someone on that team runs across the line at the end of the field while carrying the ball, or catches the ball when they are standing in the area past the last line, or “end zone.” (See “Scoring”) After the offensive team kicks the ball to the opposing team, they become the defensive team. This means they send all of the skinny players over to the bench to rest and replace them with the really big guys with thick necks.

SCORING

Do not mention obscure scoring methods like a safety or two-point conversion to your 65-year old sister because they don’t happen all that often and she will just roll her eyes and go back to reading her book. She will have heard of a touchdown and knows it is a football term that indicates that something good happened but she won’t know what it is or how many points it represents. Explain that a touchdown happens when someone on the same team as the quarterback gets across the last line on the field while carrying the ball. Or they may catch the ball while they are standing in the end zone. If you missed who had the ball and have no idea what happened, look for a guy doing the funky chicken, or two players bumping chests, or knocking their heads together. All of these can also signify a touchdown. Except if the players bumping helmets are from different teams, that is not a touchdown, but rather a fight (see Fouls).

POINTS

Touchdowns are worth 6 points. After the team makes a touchdown, they have the opportunity to score an extra point (or two, but let’s not talk about that right now). To score the extra point, one of the guys who was too skinny for football but was a good soccer player will come out to kick the ball. Sometimes he will do it barefooted and, yes, that looks like it might hurt. He will be pretty stressed out because the other team will be trying to get to him before he can make the kick. Yes, this IS just like when Lucy holds the ball for Charlie Brown, only there’s not a chance the guy who is holding the ball will pull it away at the last minute. The team makes the extra point if the kicked ball goes between the tines of the big fork. Yes, the extra point is worth 1 point. See? You’re catching on.

The other common way for a team to score is by making a field goal, which is worth 3 points. A team goes for the field goal when they decide there is no realistic chance for them to make a touchdown before they run out of their four tries. They can’t make it to the magic yellow line, but they are close enough to the big fork that they think one of those guys who can kick might be able to get the ball between the tines of the big fork. If he makes the field goal he is a big hero. If he doesn’t, everyone will hate him and give him the silent treatment like you did to me until Momma said you had to play with me again. You see? Football is just like a typical dysfunctional family. Those that play well are rewarded and those that don’t are made to feel like scum.

FOULS

Despite how it looks, football players can’t just grab and hit anyone they like. If one player grabs another in a way that is considered unseemly, there will be a penalty which is announced by one of the guys in the black and white striped shirts. A penalty usually means the offending team must move back farther away from their goal. It’s like when you would do something bad and I (the guy in the black and white striped shirt in this example) would tell Momma. Then Momma would make your curfew 11:30 instead of midnight. It was a punishment that was meaningful enough that you were supposed to learn a lesson and not do the bad thing again. Unfortunately, most football players have very short memories when it comes to the bad things they were supposed to learn not to do again, so the punishments can be frequent. And yes, they often lie and say they didn’t do anything when they really did, so it is very much like when we were growing up. Aren’t I glad we didn’t have instant replays to capture me re-biting the place where Norah had just bitten me, to make it fresh for the referee (Momma, in this example) to see?

THE PARTY

To be honest, most people only care about the Superbowl because of the parties and the commercials, so if you are invited somewhere to watch the game this year, don’t decline the invitation saying you couldn’t care less about football. People who throw Super Bowl parties always have really good food that usually involves the ‘toes — Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos — and it’s the only time of year you can eat them without feeling ashamed. Don’t offer to help make the guacamole because, according to the Wall Street Journal, avocados are very dangerous at this time of year and Emergency Rooms will be backed up with people waiting for someone to stitch up their hands. Also, do me a favor and keep your mouth shut about everything you have learned here because others won’t be familiar with things like the Button, button, who has the button play. Kick off isn’t until 6:30pm ET, but the pre-game shows will start about 8 hours before that, so you and your California friends could easily be shit-faced by noon, Pacific Time. What teams are playing this year? What a good question! The San Francisco 49ers are playing against the Kansas City Chiefs, who haven’t been in the Super Bowl for a half century. That’s not as bad as the Red Sox World Series drought but it’s close, so you can bet those Kansas City fans will be pretty excited. But more importantly, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira are teaming up to do the halftime show. So just hang out and enjoy some five-layer Mexican dip and wings until halftime, then watch closely in case Jennifer Lopez has an equipment failure because that could very well be the highlight of the evening.

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How to Watch Football