A Knuckle-Dragger's Guide To Making Your Woman a Football Fan

Larry Burton (Panama City, FL) One Saturday afternoon, I was at the tiki bar with Ruth and Bacardi the wonder dog, getting ready for an Alabama football party.

We were setting up all the TVs and stocking the bar. The food was in the smoker getting ready when it hit me: I had learned how to deal with a spouse who couldn't care less about football and made her a fan.

So now that I'm turning 52—a real geezer to most of the readers—I've decided to share my wisdom in how to turn a spouse into a football fan.

1.Tell her a story about a player on your team that tugs at her heartstrings.

Women are all about emotion. Give them a reason to use it, and they'll do it. Ruth has been interested in Cody—Terrance (Mt.) Cody—ever since I told her he used to weigh more than 400 pounds and was written off by most big programs.

I told her the story about how poor he grew up and how his mom worked two jobs to support her seven kids after his father was killed in a car accident. When I told her he moved in with his friend's family during his junior year of high school because of finances, she did everything but send him pies.

When I came home from every game last year after interviewing players, she'd always ask about Cody. Now she'll probably follow him in the pros.

She actually got mad and wanted me to get on Nick Saban when I saw him at the postgame press conferences about not letting Cody play more in third-down situations. I brought her some Cody pictures I took when I interviewed him for the last time after the Senior Bowl. She may frame them.

I realized years ago I had to make sure she had someone to pull for or worry over. She still worries about Brodie Croyle's legs and asks me for updates after all these years.

2. Make game day a party.

When I'm not covering the Tide, we throw football parties at the tiki bar. She looks forward to the whole experience, planning the menu and the party, helping with the guest list, and then participating in the whole pregame, game and postgame activities.

Let's face it: Watching a game alone with you is not going to keep her interested for long—not even if you told her Greg McElroy was born with polio and couldn't walk until he was 12, which of course is not true.

But make game day a party, and she'll be sad during the bye week.

3. Get her to love your school by initiating her motherly instincts.

Last year, I told her that nobody had any respect for Alabama—and the press was against us and that the team was being unfairly picked on.

That made her mad so she wanted to make sure we won just to spite the press.

Nobody likes a bully, and everyone wants to see them put in their place—which leads me to number four.

4. Make your team the underdog or have a dire circumstance to have to live up to.

When I told Ruth that Alabama had to win the SEC championship this year or be first team in the entire history of the Crimson Tide to not win an SEC championship at least once every 10 years, that gave her an additional reason to actually pull for Alabama.

She even had her friends so pumped up for the SEC Championship Game, one gave me an SEC championship towel that she embroidered for me to commemorate the occasion— and that friend is a Tennessee fan who said she was pumped to see such a great streak continue.

Adding halfway through the year that McElroy hadn't lost a game as a starter since junior high school gave her yet another incentive. Now she's actually talking to her other nonfootball friends about him having the chance to the first undefeated college quarterback in history.

I'd hate to check the records now and find that someone else has already done it.

5. Acknowledge her presence and support during the game.

When Ruth sees Cody or some other player I've gotten her to know make a good play, she celebrates. I make sure she gets a high-five, too—not just my drinking buddies. Then I ask her what she thought about that play and force myself to actually listen to her answer.

I tell her how insightful that was—whether it was or not—and I see her smile. That makes it all worthwhile.

Now being an old knuckle-dragger, I'm sure that she's seen through most of my ploys—but she does actually seem to enjoy the games now, anyway.

She went to Ringling School of Art, one of the most famous art colleges in the world—and about as far from a football school as you can slide the scale. It's funny to hear her have to explain that it's not that Ringling Clown College—that, by the way, isn't too far from the school she did go to.

Boy, have I dragged her a long way from the way she was when we first met and I took her to her first football game. There she was, only amazed at the strength of the male cheerleaders picking up those girls the whole game—and she hardly ever watched the game.

But paybacks are hell, and this week I have to spend time at a college reunion party of her college mates—and I'll have to pretend that I'm having a good time while they discuss people, times, and things that are as foreign to me as football was to her when we met.

Maybe if she'd tell me a story about one of her classmates who had his arms amputated in a tragic chainsaw accident and were reattached by a passing Boy Scout troop—and today, they can paint again...