Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I grew up watching the Redskins on television and the Terrapins at Byrd Stadium with my family (Dad worked for UM), and playing back-yard ball (tackle in small groups in my back yard -- two to five players on a side -- and later touch in larger groups during lunch in middle school/high school). I can't remember not likeing the game.

When I started performing at RenFest, that meant missing games on television ...

So I'm a longtime Redskins fan, though since moving to Baltimore I've become more of a Ravens fan (for one thing, I'm more likely to be able to see the Ravens on a Baltimore television station than the Redskins) -- I use my history as a Redskins fan as an excuse to have two teams that I count as "my home team", so that as long as at least one of the two is having a decent season I can enjoy the non-rational (downright silly really, but the effect exists) sense of Something Going Well For "Us" that goes with having a team one cheers for succeed.

But although I find a lot of beauty in the sport, I'm not religious about it. If weekend plans conflict with The Game, oh well, I can miss a few games (the threshold is a little different during the playoffs, of course). If I'm caught up in doing something out of viewing range of the telly, or just lose track of time, missing the first half won't kill me. (When I've lived with another football fan, sitting down to watch the game together made it more worthwhile to remember to stop whatever else I'd been doing in time for the start of the game.) And unless it comes up in conversation, I don't spend much time thinking about football Tuesday through Saturday. That's probably why you didn't mark me as a football guy. I also hang out with a lot of people uninterested in football -- in some cases downright hostile to it -- which affects how often it comes up in conversation.

I used to think about it a lot at least through high school, designing plays, discussing stats, analyzing the game I'd watched and replaying it in my head while reading about it in the Post the next day, arguing with friends about what plays should have been called at critical points instead of what was called ...

I also used to watch college basketball, but haven't done so in a long time. I'd probably watch more soccer (I catch a game, or part of one, every few years) if American camera crews and directors had a clue how to shoot it so I could see what was going on. (A few years ago I was watching soccer while talking on the phone to a friend, and remarked on how much the camera work had improved. She said, "Sorry to have to break it to you, hon, but that's an Italian camera crew, it's just American announcers." Sure enough, the next time I watched a game played here, the video choices were all wrong for making the game make any sense.)

The sport I played formally (junior varsity and varsity in middle/high school, an intramural team in college) was soccer. Folks tried to talk me into playing lacrosse, but I knew I couldn't handle that much sprinting.

Thinking a little more about football and my circle of friends ... I remember when I first heard "The Zero-G Football Song" by Claire Maier, I just about fell out of my chair. She remarked that I'd been the first person to laugh at all the physics jokes and all the football jokes. She later moved down south, and said that the intersection between the set of filkers and the set of football fans was much larger in the deep south than in the mid-Atlantic states. (When I first heard the song I could think of a few other fen who would've gotten all the jokes, but not active filkers.)