The Greatest Show on Turf

Although technically referring to the St. Louis Rams of yesteryear, "The Greatest Show on Turf" is certainly American football. Forget soccer, forget rugby, forget baseball, and definitely forget cricket. Running the gridiron, tossing the pig skin, the chess game on grass: it has few competitors and no equals. Although I've only been watching for the last decade (masochistically throwing a Superbowl party at 4 AM in the morning in Sweden as necessary!), this is now far and away my favorite professional sport. The combination of almost cartoonish violence and feints-within-feints strategy is irresistible. But until this week, I had never attended a live professional football game.

Now, I'm Cincinnati Bengals fan, and this is sadly my only piece of team gear:

Fitting, since the team has sucked so bad in the last twenty years that it'll drive a man to drink. Bad enough that spending money on tickets seemed like a waste of hard-earned cash. But lo and behold, networking to the rescue: I know a guy, who dates a girl, who has a cousin, whose mom's realty company has season tickets to the Denver Broncos. And they were playing the Bengals for the first (and last) time in years last Sunday! After some logistical maneuvering I finally got to go my first NFL game, and with my team to boot! It was awesome. Ridiculously large hot dogs:

Ridiculously large American flags:

Ridiculously large stadium (seats 70,000!):

The game started out with a bang, and 6,450 lb. of players charged onto the field (that's one team's combined weight, mind you):

The Broncos favored the run:

The Bengals passed the ball:

Although the game came down to the wire, we suffered agonizing defeat. Thirty seconds left on the clock, one final chance to score three last points, and... our rookie quarterback dove down one yard too early. Dammit. Nonetheless, the whole experience pretty much made my month. Who Dey!