Jock itch

Notes on suddenly wanting to kick everyone's butt

by Jay Jaroch

I'm developing a problem. Let me explain some of the symptoms:
1) When I'm watching football and Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy comes free on a blitz, I want him to hit the quarterback so hard he reconfigures the guy's spine into a horseshoe.

2) While playing defense in pick-up soccer games, I find myself whispering things like, "You're mine, motherfucker!" to the opposing forward.

3) In two weeks, I'm getting together with a group of old college buddies to dress in camouflage and chase each other around the woods with paintball guns.

I realize I'm not the only one with these symptoms, and that's what disturbs me. Sports used to be fun. And in a way they're still fun -- it's just the intensity of the fun that's changed. Now, in my mid 20s, I find myself suddenly bringing pointless competitive fire to activities I once considered merely "enjoyable" or "hobbies." I've noticed my friends have started to do this as well. After all, they're the ones leaping off the couch to high-five me when Lawyer Milloy ensures that the aforementioned quarterback's next meal will be served through a tube.

My male friends, that is. I never wanted to become part of that "guy fraternity" -- the hairy hordes overanalyzing sports, yearning for cutthroat competition, and desperately clinging to a self-image rooted primarily in fictionalized past victories -- but somehow I wound up learning the fraternity's charter and branding its Greek letters on my testicles. My new religion is the Church of the NFL on CBS. I take Ping-Pong too seriously. Budweiser and Domino's Pizza? Yeah, they're my fault.

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So what happened?

Well, for one thing, I graduated from college, and my own brief athletic career essentially came to a close. And though this does not necessarily preclude me from carrying out Male Directive Number One, it does impede Male Directive Number Two, which is that I must prove my superiority to other men.

Now, some men can take care of Directive Number Two through their careers; they prove their superiority through wealth or power or even the rare noble pursuit, like finding a cure for cancer. But for most of us, the implementation of Directive Number Two has a physical component. And this is why we have things such as thumb-wrestling, bar fights, and the Hundred Years' War.

Every sport is basically a proxy for battle: two sides square off, defend territory, and advance through the opponents' lines with "attackers," "long bombs," and the like. Football even has "trenches." War is what most men would choose to fill up their Saturdays with, if only you could somehow make it less fatal.

In a generally peaceful era, sporting events are the most socially acceptable way of trying to answer the eternal male question, Can I kick this guy's ass? The problem starts when we make the shift from participating in sports ourselves to watching other people participate in sports. Our desire to compete doesn't go away, but our forum for meaningful battle does. So we find outlets. One popular outlet is dreamland. We recount our glory days as point guard on the team that almost won the state tournament, or as the coach's favorite back-up running back.

Another outlet is the irrational intensity I keep experiencing. This is how men compensate for not being good enough to play in the games we watch on television. It's why we stayed glued to the Sox-Yankees series as if it were a matter of life and death. It's why we know every player's name and stats and what play the coaches should really be calling. It's why an insignificant pick-up hoops game is more likely to spawn a fight than an NBA Final. We all want to feel that we're on center stage, whether we actually are or not -- and most of us aren't.

Yes, I know it's pathetic. It must just be part of God's plan.

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What I hope isn't part of God's plan is what I saw on TV this past week. In a recent women's soccer match between the United States and Brazil, I caught this past summer's World Cup hero, Brandi Chastain, in a shoving match with her Brazilian counterpart.

I can't help thinking it's a harbinger of doom when a woman crosses the line between wanting to beat her opponent in a soccer match and wanting to beat her opponent in a soccer match. Women are men's reality slap. Women contain our competitive fire with their sanity and balance, and they hold the power to do this because Male Directive Number One is the only thing stronger than Male Directive Number Two.

If you don't believe me, watch a football game with just a bunch of your guy friends. Then watch a football game with your guy friends and at least one woman. Notice how ridiculous you'd feel screaming at the television or doing touchdown dances after the big play. Sure, you want your team to win; you just don't want it bad enough to scream and dance your way right out of a woman's respect for you.

And men need this kind of influence. Or at least I do. Without women, the world would devolve into a hideous hybrid of Mad Max and Ultimate Fighting. If somehow you removed all the women from earth today, in a month or two there would be only one guy left. His name would be Tony and he'd have killed all the other guys and would spend the rest of his days wandering around drunk wondering where all the chicks went. Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy that women are finally playing all the sports that men have traditionally played. But it's women who have things right in the first place. And the day women -- en masse -- start to join us for the face-painting, the personal fouls, and the bench-clearing brawls . . . well, that'll be the day I build my first bomb shelter.

Jay Jaroch is a freelance writer living in Cambridge. He can be reached at jayjaroch@hotmail.com, anytime except Sundays from around 1 to 4 p.m.