There are many places to enjoy a football game. The best is tailgating outside your favorite team's stadium until you figure you have enough beers on board to get up and pee at the climax of the game. The next best is a neighborhood bar. It may not be clothing-optional like your couch (depending on who your guests are), nor is the furniture quite as comfortable or the bathrooms as clean as a cave outside Tikrit, but you will never run out of beer or food.
Which is why we headed for JD's Bait Shop Sports Grill (9555 East Arapahoe Road, Greenwood Village) the other night to catch the Air Force game. You may need a vector from a ground controller to find this joint since it's snuggled away in a little strip mall (turn left at Home Depot and look for the marquee featuring a huge fish). My Air Force Academy training came in handy for locating it -- and also for recognizing that outside of the Springs, this bar has the best concentration of real Air Force fans I've found. Granted, many of them were twice my age, but they were just as into the game and their beer. And with the multitude of TVs, none of us missed a moment of the action; you can pretty much see the screens even from the bathroom.
The womenfolk had foolishly tagged along on this excursion, even though they had no real interest in the game. The wife of the new Scottish Representative to the Institute of Drinking Studies wiled away the time drinking Coors until she'd had enough of me expressing my disappointment that someone who grew up where real beer runs like water would drink something that tastes like windshield-wiper fluid. The Texan Representative's wife, who was in Vegas with the girls (no doubt going to Scores and providing the material for another lurid, innuendo-laden Vegas tourism commercial), was still included via many incoherent drunk-dials. Finally, my wife busied herself with pointlessly trying to explain to me that screaming at the screen does not affect the outcome of the game.
All of this supported the assertion that most women do not have the genetic capability to really enjoy football. That's because they still believe that permanent damage to your vocal cords does not ensure your team's miraculous comeback. They also have a concept of a mythical state of "having enough beer" -- which no real guy comprehends. And they usually don't understand why you continue to stuff your face with bar food that isn't really good but does the job because it is really greasy. Still, this eternal war between the sexes can find neutral ground at a good sports bar like JD's. The dead animal heads, live fish and boorish male behavior give the women plenty to concentrate on, while guys can just enjoy the big game.
