A friend of mine recently wrote me, via postal mail, with this complaint:
Dear Matt,
I was really pissed off yesterday, because I really wanted to watch the National Championship Game, and when I arrived home, my friend was watching a movie on the big screen. I asked him if he wanted to watch the football game, and he said ‘No, I’m cool, I’m just watching a movie.’ What should I do?
Sincerely,
37 Year Old Man with Roomates.
Well, my friend, this question comes up a lot. I would say it depends on the importance of the game. I can remember once watching Con Air on TBS, and my buddy came in and requested that we watch the Yankee’s game.
No.
The rule is, if the category of game you’d like to watch is on more often than Con Air, priority goes to the person already establishing position on the couch.
Regular season basketball, football, and hockey games are out the window.
Actually, hockey games are just out the window.
There are a few exceptions.
1) If you are a diehard fan of a certain collegiate team, that game should take precedent – although:
1a) You must be an alma-matter of that school. If you just grew up liking the team, or went there and didn’t graduate, we are sticking with Con Air.
2) Usually if this is a playoff game the game should take precedent – with a few exceptions – notably first-round playoff series which you have no connection to. We are not switching off Wayne’s World to watch Hawks vs. Bucks.
3) NFL football, on Sundays, should get the nod only if the team playing is your team. The NFL bogarts all of TV for like 10 hours on Sunday.
This is the problem with football. Because it has the shortest season of any major sport, every game seams to be a Big Game!
Often times, someone who is a diehard fan of a certain team will insist on watching one of their rival’s games because of some sort of mathematical scenario, such as: If A loses to B, then C is in the plyaoffs!
Ugh. In this instance, it should be a paper/rock/scissors scenario, although if it is an NFL game of significance, I would usually out of respect defer to football.
However:
3a) After switching off Con Air and watching said football match, it should not be expected that the person who’s Con Air session was interrupted should not be allowed to comment incessantly about how boring and lame the game is.
That means that I should be free to spew my opinions about how I think it is weird that the NFL is a league with like 10,000 players who are almost all black, yet the on-field leaders of the team are guys that even I would consider crackers, and the coaches are all morbidly obese white guys, so I think it is some fucked up remanence of post-colonization – and that almost all of the fans involved are white trash douchebags who take interest in this sport because they have a carnal desire to slit people’s throats and aren’t athletic enough.
3b) If you roll your eyes or cheer too loud we are going back to Bill and Ted.
4) Regardless of how important the event is, tennis, golf, and soccer should only take precedent if the only other thing on is The Notebook.
5) Should you arrive with pizza, beer, champagne, snacks of any kind, or fresh socks, you should be allowed to watch whatever game you’d like if you are cool about it.