I have to admit that the NGS judges’ first assignment this week rubbed me the wrong way.  And I was surprised after reading the finalists’ submissions that no one else seemed to feel the same.  See, the notion of one team “deserving” to win a game in any sport, let alone the Super Bowl, strikes me as ridiculous.

The beauty of sports is that winner is decided on the field.  Two teams or competitors duke it out for an allotted period of time, and, in the end, one emerges victorious.  Each team is provided the same opportunity to prove itself – the same rules apply, hence the term, “level playing field.”

Sure some things might not be completely even – a key player may be injured, calls may get blown, etc. – but that’s the way life is.  We all have different levels of skill and ability and obstacles that we must overcome to succeed, and so do athletic teams. 

The team that “deserves” to win is the one that puts it together on the field in the course of competition.  Each game is a clean slate.  It doesn’t matter what you did last week, or the week before, or 10 games ago.  It doesn’t matter whose home town the game is played in or whose fans are rowdier.  What matters is how, at that precise moment, each team plays.  Worthiness is decided on the field. 

To paraphrase Kirsten Dunst in what is possibly my favorite guilty pleasure movie, you've got to bring it.  The person or team that does "deserves" to win, plain and simple.

I’d like to make a few comments about women and sports.  Football in particular.  In another post this morning, someone kindly asked women to stay out of bars during NFL games unless they arrived in jerseys and had their faces painted like maniacs.  This got me thinking. 

Maybe I’m odd, here but here’s my story.  I grew up in Baltimore in a family with season tickets to the Colts.  All of my family loved the Colts.  My grandmother and my great-grandmother attended every home game.  Johnny U lived in our town and it was made very clear to me very early on in my life that he was a demi-god.  On top of that, my grandmother went to the University of Tennessee.  When the Colts left town, we turned our full attention and passion on the Vols instead of the hated Redskins in DC.  Football was religion in our house and everyone took communion.

When time came for college, I went to Notre Dame.  For all of you men out there who don’t think women know/appreciate football, I direct you to find a female graduate of ND.  Life revolves around football at ND.  No surprise there.  But what is surprising is that I’m not just talking about the guys that play on Saturday.  Every dorm, male and female (yes, ND has single-sex dorms, it IS that Catholic), fields an interhall team.  The guys dorms play full pads, full tackle, no-holds barred football.  The girls dorms play a version of flag that, well let’s just say its NOT no-contact.  The teams play a full fall schedule with playoffs and the championship game for both the guys and girls is played in the house that Rockne built the Sunday after the final home game.

I joined the team my freshman year, mostly because I loved football and thought it would be a good way to get to know other people in my dorm.  It was all that and so much more.  See, we had coaches.  We had a playbook borrowed from the guy’s varsity team.  We had a defensive back that gobbled up passes and returned them for interceptions like Ed Reed.  We had a running back that made tacklers miss like Barry Sanders (and I’m not just being flattering because she was my roommate and is still my best friend).  We practiced four days a week and played games on Sunday.  My freshman year we lost one game on our way to the championships.  We were scored on only once on an interception returned for a touchdown.  We played our way to a 0-0 championship game in ND stadium.  We went into overtime and broke the tie with a shovel pass into the end zone.  Our captain sealed the victory with an interception. 

Along the way, we learned routes, we learned blocking schemes, we learned defensive coverages and blitz packages and stunts.  I can guarantee my college friends and I, and the hundreds of other girls who played interhall, know as much if not more than any guy who played varsity in high school.

We all still love football.  We got to bars to watch games when we’re not actually at them.  But we’re not there in jerseys and face paint.  We’re the cute chicks in the designer jeans, t-shirts and Pumas at the table in the corner intently watching the game and dissecting the play calling on both sides of the ball and ignoring the guys in the jerseys and face paint who keep distracting US from the game.