For the older generation of male sports fans, Super Bowl games mean three things: top flight action, tons of good food and drink and a captive audience that has little choice but to watch you yell, swear, slam armrests and generally behave like a cross between an an angry toddler and Homer Simpson.
At least that’s how the social-media stereotype goes (and goes and goes and goes).
So whether you’re a grandfather, dad, uncle or simply the oldest guy in the room watching this weekend’s Super Bowl game between the Kansas Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles – to embrace the stereotype, you must follow these rules.
1. Always take the first serving of nachos and, when you do, make sure to scoop all the cheese topping. Ignore the eye rolls from the younger generation – they’ll learn that with age comes the right to indulge in cheese greed.
2. Every time a quarterback gets hit, remind everyone about how wimpy today’s athletes are compared to the warriors from your day. No need to justify why you feel that quarterbacks suffering brutal knee injuries and career-ending concussions made the game better.
3. Hooting and hollering, swearing at the refs and pounding your fist on the armrest are all acceptable forms of old-fan behaviour.
4. Whenever the camera focusses on Andy Reid, the Chiefs’ 66-year-old walrus-like head coach, mention that he could have coached in any era. Everyone will agree with you because big lumbering Andy is one of the few beloved coaches in football history.
5. Whenever the camera focusses on Taylor Swift – who is dating Chiefs player Travis Kelce (which it will at least 200 times) quote old-school broadcaster Al Michaels who once grumpily noted that: “People tune in to watch a football game. I’m not doing Access Hollywood.”
6. Criticize everything about the halftime show, which will be performed by rapper Kendrick Lamar. You might even throw in the line: “Marching bands used to be good enough.”
7. Long commercial breaks provide the perfect timing to unleash your favourite rant about how all these “damn ads” are ruining the pace of the game and turning off viewers. No need to mention that, in spite of these ever-lengthening stoppages, you still managed to watch every minute of every playoff game this year.
8. Exhibiting generational confusion on players’ last names is another specialty of older fans. So make sure you misidentify current players by their namesakes from the past. Example: refer to Xavier Worthy (the current Chiefs receiver) as James Worthy (the old L.A. Lakers basketball star). This generational name-mashing also works well with Hollywood Brown (old-school mixup Hollywood Henderson) and Reed Blankenship (Todd Blankenship).
9. When you get called out for mixing up names, reassert your generational cred by reminding everyone that you remember watching the Chiefs star QB Patrick Mahomes’ father play Major League baseball. No one has to know that you never actually saw him pitch or that you just learned this fact.
10. At the end of the game, loudly boast that you correctly called that the Chiefs would win and that Mahomes would be MVP. It doesn’t matter that you probably didn’t make this prediction – no one has been listening to you since you stole all the nachos.
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