Let me be among the many to commend Erin Andrews for her smart response to the Senseless Notion That Women Don't Know College Football.
I admit that I flip between Fox Sports One and College Gameday, as I enjoy both shows and hate commercials, but let me give this unsolicited plug to FS1: I never know what the folks there are going to say. That's an invaluable commodity in television. One of the catalysts of that is Erin Andrews, who is a talented host who routinely whips potentially nuclear egos into shape better than anyone I've seen on TV.
Erin Andrews knows more about College Football than the countless idiots who attack her on Twitter and many of my male counterparts in the writing world. Yes I said it; I'll say it again. And, I add parenthetically, you can hear her talk about it here and you should before you let some idiot you know send a nasty tweet to her again.
When I was at the University of Tennessee I more often than not found that the most intelligent takes on college football came from my female classmates, oftentimes while adorned in sundresses and heels, and that they knew the game (and I mean really knew it, to the extent that they'd scream and curse about a safety blowing an assignment) much more so than my buddies who were there for food and a good time. I'm not going to pretend to be someone who spends his time looking at game film. But having talked to quite a few coaches and understanding what they looked at, it was clear to me that there were a number of young women at these tailgates who had ducked their heads in at one point or another. “Remember The Titans” was more accurate than we thought.
Oddly, SEC men should know this better than anyone. I'm a native New Yorker, and while I'm sure there are women here who know football, it's not the same as in the South. I'd been to plenty of Jets games where women attended and got really drunk and did dumb things but never did they discuss nickle packages. The packages they discussed were quite different. While living in the SEC, I literally watched a beautiful 20-something in a sundress complain about a sophisticated defensive call, then later in the week see an ESPN analyst agree with her. Her response when I texted?
“Well, duh.”
Gentlemen, women know football. Plenty of times, they know it better than you. Which leads me back to a high-five for Erin Andrews who knows football. My Twitter account is @TJ22Hatter. Tweet stupid things at me. Because I know that I know less about football than Erin Andrews. I had it proven to me many times when I lived in the South. I look forward to you telling me “your gay.”
