Go Team!

Da Bears
Originally uploaded by dansays.

I'd like to say that I actually went to see the Bears play today but I did not. I watched them on TV though and fortunately had Melissa explaining the rules to me, play-by-play. Up to that point, I'd just been cheering when the crowd did.

Chicago is a bit of a sports-mad town, it's fair to say. We've got a killer basketball team, a fairly boisterous ice hockey team, and of course we have our baseball teams. But unlike the cross-town rivalry that exists in baseball, where you're either a Cubs fan or a Sox fan, Chicago's football community need not be so divided. We only have one football team in the NFL and the whole city gets behind it.

I enjoy the theatrics of the game more than the game itself, I think. I love the stop-start pace of the game, while the offensive/defensive teams switch and the strategies are worked out. I love that Urlacher on the Bears defensive team is a human brick wall and it makes me scared just to look at him. I love that it takes the umpires 3 minutes to deliberate whether the team moved a whole 5 yards or not. And I love it when the stadium, and the bar you're drinking in, erupts when the Bears win.

Which they didn't today. Bummer.