You're gonna wanna click this to see the bigger version.Item: Has everyone seen Football Gameplan’s preview of tonight’s game? The good news is that for the first time in like three years, he’s picked the Militia to win. The bad news is that apparently we have some new QB named Allison Kaheel. Hope she knows what she’s doing.
Item: Tiny Coach will not be joining us at the game because oddly enough, the Militia management have chosen not to schedule their games on a timetable that caters to those with a 7 pm bedtime. In exchange, however, I offer you the Opening Day Photo Montage on the right there.
Item: Can we talk about the Boston Militia website for a moment? There have definitely been some excellent improvements: I love the bewildered-looking Twitter bird who seems to have landed on the field at an inopportune moment. I love the very unsettling “Like Us on Facebook” imperative with the menacing skull grin looming in the background (I picture him saying “…OR ELSE.”) I love that the Youtube link goes to Backseat Coach’s channel.
I do not love the SEO tactic of repeating the phrase “women’s football” eighty thousand times on each page. Did anyone else notice this? If you want to be a women’s football player on a women’s football team, you can follow the women’s football link to the page about tryouts for women’s football. Now, I love keyword density as much as the next girl, but this starts to come off like that woodchuck chuck thing. But honestly, if that’s the biggest thing I have to complain about, I think we’re doing pretty damn well.
Item: When talking about the Boston Militia (women’s football team), which I do on a regular basis, I often find myself using the first person plural (“We’ve won the national championship two years in a row” or “DC is really our strongest competitor”, etc.) And then I feel ridiculous, because I haven’t won jack squat and I’m fairly certain the cheeseburgers served at our home games would be more competitive on the field than I would. I remember a comedian talking about this phenomenon; something to the effect of “You know how after some team wins a big game, they show some dudes in the stands yelling ‘We’re number one! We’re number one!’ No, THEY’RE number one. YOU’RE fat and drunk.”
Item: Here’s to a fantastic season, Boston Militia women’s football team! We’re You’re number one. Well, ok, Tiny Coach is too.
There are a few topics I’ve been wanting to post about for the last two or three years. Sometimes I try, but I always stop because my level of emotion about the subject compromises my ability to be articulate. (If you’d like to see what that looks like in action, take a look at this Margaret Cho video – start watching at 1:45.)
But I’m biting the bullet & posting this today because I really want to make sure everyone’s clear on this.
So let’s talk about the Lingerie Football League.
I cannot stand the Lingerie Football League.
I have nothing but contempt for LFL founder Mitch Mortaza. The LFL runs contrary to virtually everything I love about women’s football. If you set out with the express intention of creating something to cause the maximum possible damage to the credibility of women’s tackle football, I don’t think you could come up with anything that does that better than the LFL is already doing.
None of that should be news; I’ve been quite open about my dislike of the Lingerie Football League in a number of venues. However, up until yesterday, I have never said one single negative thing about or to any LFL players.
That’s an important distinction to make, because without it, the discussion risks a descent into some cliché catfight thing of some girls against some other girls. And that’s really not what this is. If you want to play for the LFL, go ahead. I can see the appeal – it’s nice to have a lot of people at your games. It’s nice when people think you’re hot. It’s nice to make money for being a football player (yeah, I know that the LFL converted to amateur status this season & as of this year, players are no longer receiving payment from the league. But many are paid for appearances at trade shows or exhibitions, etc., and as far as I’m concerned, that counts.) It’s nice to have your games on TV. It’s nice to have your efforts recognized.
So if that’s what you choose to do, by all means, do it. I will continue to express my thoughts about the league you play for and the men who make money off of it, but I have no need to talk to or about you yourselves.
Unless, of course, you make a semi-coherent seven-minute-long video that ends with this:
THEN I feel obliged to respond to you, and here is what I have to say: I already know of at least fifteen WFA & IWFL players who want very, very much to take you up on that challenge, and I’m pretty sure there are a lot more who will join them once they hear about this. Former Militia player and current badass Mia Brickhouse has volunteered to organize the game; anyone of any league wanting to back up their leaguemates should contact her on Facebook or email her at miabrick8 at yahoo dot com. As of last night, she was still unable find one single LFL player actually willing to participate.
Although this entry is called “why I write”, it might be more accurate to call it “why I care.” I know that some people wonder why Backseat Coach and I are passionate enough to fly around the country to Militia away games and do all the writing & tweeting & promotion that we do. One answer is that I have good friends on the team and we want to support them and the other Militia players we’ve become friends with over the past few years. But there’s more that’s not as easy to articulate; that’s what this post is about.
When I was a kid, my dad would play basketball at the Watertown YMCA once a week. He would bring me and my younger sister along, and we hung out there with the kids of the other guys playing. I learned two things from being at those games, one of which I was conscious of learning and one that I wasn’t. The former was that if there are enough of you and you are willing to look in really grimy corners, you can usually find enough change to get a communal bag of Skittles from the vending machine. The latter was that men play sports.
It’s not like anyone said this to me directly, it’s just something that I absorbed. I saw guys play sports on TV, I saw guys play sports in real life. Thus, guys played sports. Women competed in the Olympics, of course, but they were, like, superheroes or gladiators or something – not real life. Even our Mission Hill neighborhood softball league was all men. I imagine my parents would be upset to hear that that’s what I took away from watching my dad play sports, as it goes entirely against the “girls can do anything” mantra that was so popular among second-wave feminists & allies in the 80s. I certainly heard that enough.
But the truth is that you can tell your kids whatever you want – God exists, God doesn’t exist, girls can do anything, the Cubs are the best baseball team in the world – and that’s fine, but eventually those kids are going see to the world for themselves and they may find out that what you told them doesn’t match the reality of what they see…even if you really, really want it to be true. They will grow up to believe what they see happening, even if they don’t notice that they’re seeing it.
A few weeks ago, Backseat Coach and I brought our brand-new baby, Tiny Coach, to his first Boston Militia game. As I mentioned in this post, I am utterly freaked out by the idea of my kid playing football and as such I plan to try to raise him to believe that football is only played by women. However, since the chance of me pulling that off in a Patriots-crazy household is fairly slim, I will settle for raising him to know that women CAN play football. I won’t have to tell him this; I don’t intend to continually make a big deal out of it. I simply plan to bring him to Militia games the way my dad brought me to his basketball games.
It’s one thing to have people tell you that women are strong; it’s another thing to grow up seeing the power of an all-female OL, the speed of running backs who are girls, the precision of a QB who’s pretty much the same size as your not-particularly-big mom. When I think about what I want my son to grow up knowing, so much of it is visible on our game days at Dilboy Stadium: women can be seriously bad-ass. Have people’s backs even if they don’t look like you. If someone you don’t like gets hurt, you should still hope they’re ok. If someone you care about is doing something they care about, show up and cheer for them, even when it’s raining. (Especially when it’s raining.)
Diversity’s a great concept and a great buzzword. It’s also bullshit nine times out of ten. True diversity in any setting is incredibly difficult to achieve and even harder to sustain. To this day, I have never seen a more powerfully diverse group of people work together as strongly as the Militia players do. Race, class, age, sexuality & hairstyle differences get checked at the door, and the overwhelming support that the teammates offer each other is still breathtaking to me. That’s what I want my son to grow up seeing, because from where I sit in the stands, to me, it looks like a revolution.
Overheard after the game, “It’s all relative” edition
Slack (#46, TE): Oh! Hi, Tiny Coach! Me: Hey, TC, say hi to Slack! Slack (backing away): Oh, I’m, like, the most foul-smelling person in creation right now. Conway (#74, OL): Dude, he poops in his own pants. Slack: Valid point.
***
Lost in no translation
Last Saturday, our next-door neighbors were having a birthday party/block party, and we stopped to chat for a few minutes on our way to the Indy game. BSC and I are not exactly subtle in our gameday gear, so one of the party guests asked where we were going. We told him excitedly that we were going to a women’s football game, and I was a little taken aback by his relatively reserved reaction. I mean, I know not everyone gets into this sport as much as us, but do you really have a problem with it, buddy? About 30 seconds into the conversation, though, we realized that he assumed we were actually talking about women’s soccer in an unbelievably pretentious pseudo-European manner. Oh, pip pip! We’re just off to a football match – a women’s football match! Cheerio, old chaps! Yeah, no. I showed him the 2011 Militia program and he thought it was the shit. Which it is, old chaps, which it is.
***
This should have been with Chi-Town Round-Up but I forgot about it until today
Scene: Getting ready to board plane back from Chicago with Conway (#74, OL), who asked to gate-check her shoulder pads.
Airline attendant: Are you sure? They might get banged up a little bit. Me: Um, have you ever seen a football game? [pause] Airline attendant: Oh. Right. Conway: There it is.
I have stuff & stories about yesterday but those are being temporarily preempted so I can address what I am dubbing the Manchester Hullabaloo.
The Manchester Hullabaloo involves some phenomenal jackassery from the coach of the Manchester Freedom, who this morning made several negative and insulting posts on Facebook about the Boston Militia’s game last night and their advancement to the champ-pimp’n-ship. I’d repost them here, but in true jackass style, the posts (plus subsequent comments) were deleted shortly after people started responding to them.
The gist of one was that the San Diego Surge would be the Militia’s undoing, etc. etc. The other, which I responded to and therefore remember better, went a little somethin’ like this:
You have to wonder how much a championship is worth when one team can coast through a game and still destroy the other team. The Militia won last night…but DID YOU?
Oh, man, where to begin? First, this might become my new BUT DO THEY DARE KICK OFF TO TARA STEPHENSON?Donaldson on the carry, and she moves the ball forward enough for another Militia first down! BUT DID SHE?? I’m going to hit the snack bar to get some water before the halftime rush. BUT ARE YOU?? Try it! It’s fun! (BUT IS IT??)
Second: gimme a friggin’ break. Was it the absolute best performance the Militia’s ever given? Nah. Does anyone give 100% of their A-game 100% of the time? No, they really don’t. It’s clear to me from talking to some of the players last night & reading their posts about the game that they are well aware that they weren’t in finest form. It’s now up to them to figure out what to do with that, since – regardless of the “quality” of their performance – they have in fact earned the right to advance in the playoffs.
Third: here’s where it gets interesting. The Manchester coach who made the posts then told at least two people that they were really meant to have a positive effect on the Militia – to “fire them up” so they would step up their game and play better in the championship.
I’m not sure I believe that, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. Either way, the guy’s a jackass. If he really DID mean for those comments to be some sort of reverse psychology motivation, that’s insulting not just to the players but to the Militia coaching staff as well. Don’t presume to coach other people’s teams, you jackass. It’s stupid, disrespectful and tacky.
And if he just made up that explanation once he saw that a) people were going to respond and b) they were going to respond with poise and class instead of returning insults, he’s a lying jackass.
But I think what bothers me the most is that he posted these things on the official page of the Manchester Freedom team. When you post on something like that, you are speaking for your team. You’re representing the coaching staff, the owner and the players. That’s not the time to talk shit about anyone, regardless of your motivations for doing so. Backseat Coach has posting privileges on the Militia Twitter account because he tweets out lots of the games we attend; when he has opinionated commentary, he posts from his own Twitter account, not the Militia’s. (Well, mostly.)
So you know what, Mr. Manchester Hullabaloo guy? What you posted was wrong. Your reasons for posting it were wrong. Copping out by deleting your posts was wrong. You’re just wrong, eight ways to Sunday, and both the team you coach and the team I support deserve better.
That’s currently the first featured slide on the WFA homepage. Even better, clicking on it brings you to…a press release about how Chicago beat Pittsburgh two and a half weeks ago. Yeah, I understand typos and I understand botched links, but honestly, these women work hard enough to deserve some wicked basic proofreading. See you at the Conference Phip-n-Ship on Saturday!
***
Coda: Overheard thirty seconds ago:
BSC: Cham-phip-n-ship? Nah, it should be a Cham-PIMP’N-ship. [pause] And you know what? If it WAS a cham-pimp’n-ship, we’d fuckin’ win that shit too! We got some pimps on our team. For real.
BSC took over TC duty for the 3Q. Love it. First off, shout out to the grounds crew at the Force stadium. As is tradition, the stands for fans of the visiting team face directly into the sun and it was ridiculously hot out. Poor little Tiny Coach was cooking so I took him down into the sliver of shade by the storage shed (which, coincidentally, also turned out to be the Militia locker room). I was standing there rocking him a bit and trying to balance him, his bottle, my Gatorade and his carrier while also trying to see what the hell was happening in the game, and one of the field guys took it upon himself to bring me a folding chair, which made my life far easier. Classy move, Force field guy! It was much appreciated.
***
BSC (reading a friend’s comment on Facebook after the game): “Here’s your ass on a plate.” What does it mean?
me: You know, like “having your ass handed to you.”
BSC: Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. I was picturing, like, those decorative plates that you put in a cabinet that have the royal wedding on them or something.
***
As BSC observed [with nothin’ but love of course. – BSC], Kita (#79, DT) posts on Facebook like the Incredible Hulk:
Things my infant son has completely slept through (a partial list)
1. The largest and loudest lighting storm in recorded New England history.
2. His first and second plane flights.
3. The entire second half of the Militia/Force playoff game. [He was pretty confident it was over anyway. – BSC]
***
So let’s talk about Conway (#74, OL)’s dad. First of all, the man drove 730 miles from Georgia to Chicago in his Reagan-era Volvo to watch his daughter’s game, and that in and of itself makes him even more bad-ass than those of us who flew with our 9-week-old baby to the game.
Backseat Coach, Tiny Coach, Pa Conway & I went to lunch together, hit up a party supply store for ridiculous hats, and then parted ways as Pa Conway wanted to get to the game an hour or so early, and TC needed to nap first. However, when we arrived at the stadium and went to the Militia cheering section, he was nowhere to be found. No one had seen him, and we got no response to the text messages sent to his phone. Had he gotten lost? Had he really made the entire cross-country trip only to be driving in circles around an unfamiliar town instead of seeing the game? Had he been in an accident? Heatstroke? We could not think of a single non-disastrous reason that would have kept him from standing with us & cheering, and by halftime, even those of us not inclined towards panic were officially worried.
So I headed over towards enemy territory to try to find him in the stands (maybe it was too hot where we were?) and I considered the prospect of asking the P.A. guy to make an announcement if I couldn’t find him, just so we could know whether to widen the search beyond the stadium itself.
Halfway there, who should I see walking towards me but Pa Conway, all dressed in Militia red and grinning to beat the band. “Hi!” he said in his fantastic Southeastern accent. “Spent the first half on the 50-yard line tormentin’ the Force! I was the only one there cheering at the Militia touchdowns, so I stood up and yelled extra loud! What do y’all got going on on this side?”
***
Fan-freaking-tastic image by Tree (#77, DL)
You know that scene in Jaws where Brody’s casually dumping fish guts into the water and all of sudden *BAM* RAWWWWRRR comes the shark out of the water with his big ol’ teeth? I have a theory that that’s how Vicky Eddy (#45, LB) approaches anything she wants. We already know this to be true in a football setting (see pulling a Vicky Eddy).
However, last Sunday morning we were all at O’Hare waiting to get on our ungodly early flight. Someone – sorry, I’m not sure who – asked if anyone wanted some hash browns. “I’d have hash browns,” said Alpo (#50, C), getting up out of her seat. And then *BAM* RAWRRRRRR comes Vicky Eddy, fully launching herself over two rows of seats to get there first. Poor hash browns never saw it coming.
***
I have no idea how to pronounce “Chi-town”. Is it like “shy-town”? Or with a hard “ch” like “Ky-town”? Because if you pronounce “Chi” like it’s actually pronounced in “Chicago” it sounds a lot like “shit-town” and that’s just rude. But in any case: thanks, Chi-town! Can’t ask for much more than good french fries and good football. But now *bam*, rawwwrrrrr, onto the next one. ‘Sup, Indy. We’re lookin’ at you.
Random dude sitting next to me: Y’know, I don’t think “Boston Militia” is a very good name. Me: OK. RD: I think they should be called “The Steel and Velvet”. Me: O…K. RD: Steel ’cause they’re hard and tough, right? And velvet because they’re also soft! Me: Soft. RD:: Y’know, like sweet. Me: Yeah. You’ve never been to any of their afterparties, have you? RD: No. Can I come to one of the afterparties? Me: No. RD’s friend: Dude, that’s the third person who’s told you that name sucks. Let it go.
2. My take on the impending epic rematch between Boston & DC tonight, in the form of a haiku
Hey, DC Divas –
I don’t think this game will go
like you think it will.
After each of several excellent defensive plays by the Militia, I found myself yelling “Fish fry!!” This was surprisingly fun, and I am sad that I may only get to do that once more this season and not even in person (our other game against the Sharks is an away game ON my due date, so even if the PTBNL shows up a little early or a little late, the chances of my being there are pretty much nil).
So this begs the question, can you yell “Fish fry” at other teams? Does it make any less sense than some of the other things people yell at sporting events? As far as I’m concerned, it’s still head and shoulders above yelling “Yankees suck” at a Sox/Tampa Bay game, but I might be off on this one.
And if I can’t yell it at other games, can I yell it at other times – like, say, finally figuring out the multi-conditional formula I need to make a spreadsheet work, or getting a really good parking space, or other people’s good fortune? (“Guess what? My supervisor finally figured out that I was pulling the weight of my entire working group and I’m getting a relief-in-grade bonus.” “Sweet! Fish fry!!”)
Yeah, I dunno about that.
—-
OK, so you know how sometimes there’s a play where we’re on offense and we just need to eke out like one or two more yards for a first down or a TD and the whole world is lined up against whoever has the ball but she’s still somehow moving forward? I have a tendency to yell “Push! PUSH!” in those situations, which seems appropriate to me. My sister attended the game with us last night, and after one such push-yelling episode, giggled & said “Hey, pretty soon we’ll be saying that to YOU.” A fine point you make there. (At least I hope it’s that and not “Fish fry!!”)
—-
Dear Sharks player with the bright yellow shoes,
What’s up with your bright yellow shoes? I’m not sure how they appear to players on the field but to us, they keep looking like someone’s thrown a few flags that for some reason are moving around of their own accord. Also they kind of look like Crocs. If it turns out that it’s some memorial thing where you’re honoring someone by wearing that particular color shoe then ok, I’ll feel like kind of an ass. But if it’s just that yellow shoes are, like, your thing, I have to say it’s a bit obnoxious.
xo
militia cheerleader
—-
I am not and have never claimed to be anything close to an expert on the game of football. But I’ve learned more from watching Militia games in the past three years than I did by watching NFL games my whole life, and I can definitely see that I’ve made strides in this area. I can now often spot an illegal play happening before it’s called, for which I am then inordinately proud of myself. I still have a ways to go, however, because while the people around me are yelling “Holding!” or “Offside!” I am still yelling “Hey! You’re totally not supposed to do that, what you just did!”
What can I say? I’m getting there.
—-
The internet radio broadcast of the game by the folks that cover the Sharks can be heard here if you’re interested; we haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but I’m glad it’s there and I’m glad that the people doing the broadcast take the game seriously. However, at the risk of sounding like a nitpicky picker of nits, I do have to say that I am fairly certain that the Militia Dudes at the game represent the Revolutionary War period, not the Civil War.
Speaking of the Militia Dudes, OMG WITH THE FRIGGIN MUSKET FIRE. Please let a pregnant lady know when you’re gonna fire shit off so she doesn’t shriek and lose her already-precarious balance. Also, there was an unfortunate coincidence wherein the muskets were fired right at the same time that one of the Sharks lay down on the sideline (presumably to stretch) but I of course thought OMG THEY SHOT A SHARK. Totally not the fish fry I was looking for.
—-
Overheard in the car on the way home:
Me: Are you going to the away games I can’t go to? BSC: I dunno. Probably not. Me: Really? I think you should. BSC: Well, that changes things a bit. Me: What, that I think you should go? Dude, I wasn’t asking, like, “How much do you love me”, it was “You’re going to the games i can’t go to, RIGHT?” BSC: Good to know. Me: I mean really. Unless I’ve been actively having contractions for a few hours straight already, you totally have time to get to Connecticut, tweet the game, get back and get me to the Brigham.
