Tom Brady’s balls. More to the point: Tom Brady’s under-inflated balls.

If you can talk about a man’s balls, inflated or otherwise, and keep a straight face, you are halfway to being a true NFL fan. Having arrived in the US with zilch knowledge of American Football, I had to get in the know very quickly if I was to stand any chance of talking to people.

The New England Patriots’ alleged deflation of balls in their defeat of the Indianapolis Colts in January 2015 gave rise to the scandal that is Deflategate. I love a good story, and now, I discover, everyone hates Tom Brady, who received a four game suspension for his part in the cheating.

That’s all I know about the NFL, though I really try when the summer season starts. I’ve read Football for Dummies several times, but think maybe they need a book titled Football for Dummies’ Dummies that might make the whole thing more comprehensible.

You just can’t avoid it though, just as you can’t avoid sport in almost every US bar. Nearly every hostelry I’ve visited has a TV screen; usually, several. Seated in front of them will be men with beers, shouting a lot.

Shouting is essential to NFL fandom, in particular. So is throwing chairs across the room when somebody does something really bad, like touching another man and bringing a halt to the game. This happens a lot, but it seems there are recent new rules, about which everyone is complaining, and now even a semblance of touchy-feely is grounds for punishment.

So, having learned why Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were in the balls doghouse, I had to start learning the behaviour of fans. Shouting a lot came easily to me (heck, I grew up on the terraces of the Cardiff Arms Park and Welsh rugby Internationals); the rules, less so.

As far as I can make out, the basics of American Football are that a lot of men in Hannibal Lecter style masks and Dallas style shoulder pads run out onto a field and throw something the same shape as a rugby ball. Then, just as they’re getting into their stride, they are tackled and brought to the ground.

Next, everything stops. I have no idea why. Is there a tea-break? Are the teams required to nip to a bar to have a pint, before turning refreshed and ready for more action?

During the tea-breaks, a lot of overweight men with clipboards and the first signs of a heart attack frown a lot and run around frantically, shouting at more overweight men and waving to the Hannibals.

This, I learn, is what’s called Time Out”: not, as it seems to me, pure laziness and a period in which shoulder pads have to be adjusted.
 

Sometimes, a man is thrown over one of the sidelines, and that’s a cue for another tea-break and also one for the men with clipboards to start self-combusting.

Now, back to Mr Brady. I learn he is very successful and plays quarterback (that’s somewhere near the back, I presume; or is it at the front, ahead of a half-back, three-quarter-back, or two-thirds-back? Who knows) for the New England Patriots. He’s the only player to have won five Super Bowls for the same team, but I’ll get to the Super Bowl shortly.

Let’s get back to the rules. So, the Hannibals are required to run over markings on a big field and, each one they cross, they get some points. They can also get points for kicking the ball over the goalposts. Then they all stop again. Think rugby with Bank Holidays in between. Making it over the final line is called a Touchdown, and this is when the men in the bar really start shouting (if their man is the Touch-downer) and throwing furniture (if their man has been bypassed by the Touch-downer).

This carries on for hours – possibly days; you could run a couple of marathons and return to find the guys still on tea-break. “What are they doing now?” I asked one of the shouting men, as I recently tried to comprehend another stoppage. Having patiently tried to explain to me the finer details of whichever game it was (they all look the same to me), he responded: “You’re outta questions.” Oh, well; I tried.

All of this interminable excitement culminates in the Super Bowl, or the Big Game, and takes place at the beginning of the year and, in 2019, on February 3rd. I can hardly wait.

Being a fan means you have to start getting excited about Super Bowl Sunday the moment Christmas is over and it’s a day that comes second only to Thanksgiving (the penultimate Thursday in November) in terms of food consumption.

In fact, food is essential; so is beer. Bud Light is currently the official sponsor, a contract that has been extended to 2022. Now, you see? I’m getting into it. The highlights of the event are a superstar belting out his or her greatest hits (with varying degrees of success) and the TV commercials.

Oh, the commercials. If there’s one thing that Bud Light does not take lightly, it’s their advertising during the Super Bowl. There’s always a message hidden in there, last year delivered by Bud Knight, a hero who “arriveth to smite thine enemies and pick up thy 24-packs.” Actually, the only message is “Drink more beer.” Maybe next year, self-confessed beer enthusiast Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh will feature. 

The food commercials are not in the same league – last year’s Wendy’s Burgers just made everyone thirsty for Bud Light. Why not just stick to chicken wings, the staple diet of pretty much every American? Twenty wings for $5 in thousands of bars across the country? In a place as big as America? Don’t male chickens have lessons in birth control? Maybe someone should cut their balls off. 

Now there’s a job for Tom Brady when he retires.