As men we're all subject to certain sports rules that haven't ever really been codified but nevertheless govern the soul of our very existence. I truly recognized this during my first year of law school when a short, fat white guy wearing a Samari Rolle jersey walked into a sports bar on an average Tuesday night. There wasn't a game, there wasn't a potential game, and there was no way this guy had been playing football. My friend Andrew Shaw tuned to me and said, "Hey look, Samari Rolle's at Sam's sports bar." This line killed me.
Because it crystallized what we both knew, there was no way this short, fat white guy should be wearing a jersey into the bar. I maintain this is true for any race but on this night at this bar, that line made perfect sense. And I'm not going to lie, once you start saying, "Hey look, (insert athlete here)'s at (insert place here)" this keeps getting funnier and funnier. It never gets old. The more obscure the athlete or the jersey the better it works. It works so well that my wife beats me to this phrase now. She loves it. Around new people it's also perfect. Because, for just an instant, they think the athlete might really be there. That spark of interest in your friend's eyes just before they see the person who least resembles the athlete wearing the jersey is invaluable. It's sublime.
And it all works because anyone of any intelligence whatsoever knows that you can't wear a sports jersey to any event other than a sporting event. And even then it's pretty lame.
My favorite all-time story about using the jersey line came when we were out in Las Vegas for my bachelor party. One of my friends said, "Hey look, Jermaine O'Neal's at the Hard Rock pool." We all turned around and there were two guys standing by the pool wearing matching Jermaine O'Neal jerseys.
As we're all laughing, who should come walking up to them but ... Jermaine O'Neal. Seriously, Jermaine O'Neal's boys wear Jermaine O'Neal jerseys when they go out. But Jermaine O'Neal doesn't. This floored us all and was the final inspiration for what would become a book.
Back in 2005 over many beers, billable hours, and e-mail threads featuring not-safe-for-work links, six friends and I codified these rules of masculinity. We called them maniquette (a clever combination of man and etiquette). This name for our rules lasted several months until we realized that people were not smart enough to realize the complex name we'd chosen for our rules.
We self-published these rules and contemplated suing Miller Lite for their subsequent lame Man Law advertising campaign that dumbed down the rules of our existence and made these rules so simple even Jim Rome could understand them. Jim "Goatee Not Getting it Done" Rome. Plainly, this would not do.
So this February we published our collection of 975 rules for men who aren't women in the 21st century. We inventively titled this Man: The Book.
The concept is simple -- despite our differences in race, religion, continent, jobs, or age, all men share certain inviolate truths. These rules apply to you whether you're a pro basketball player (as one of my co-authors D.J. Harrison is), a soon-to-be Mathematics Ph. D (as co-author Chris Shaw is) or a lawyer (multiple authors writing via pseudonym). We made the rules, made fun of each other, and redefined the world. Or something like that.
Now I'm sharing 25 of these sports rules with y'all. Because I care. Enjoy.
1. It is perfectly normal to contemplate killing your best guy friend after he fakes a video game punt and scores. Actually killing him is, surprisingly, only legal in Nova Scotia.
2. Pansy magic girl shots are not allowed in a respectable game of horse. Pansy magic girl shots are defined in the same way the Supreme Court defines obscenity: you know it when you see it. For example, all seated shots are by definition pansy magic girl shots.
3. If your method of swimming may be described as the "doggy paddle," there is no reason for you to ever enter water above your head.
4. Once during the football season, a man is allowed a bye-week, where he may choose to not watch any college or NFL games for the whole weekend. Spelling is important: a bi-week, which is when a man chooses to try out sex with another man for seven days, is not the same thing at all.
5. Admit that Tecmo Super Bowl was the greatest video game ever created and stop arguing otherwise.
6. Don't wear lifting gloves to the gym unless you would feel comfortable with the result of taking said gloves off and slapping the largest man in the face with them.
7. If you strike out in a Wiffle Ball game, you must drop your bat and squarely face the pitcher. He may then choose to peg you with the wiffle ball if he so desires.
8. You never need to stretch or warm up for any intramural or rec league game. At most you may take a few seconds of quad stretches. Avoid any stretch that requires you to spread your legs wide and place your head in the direct vicinity of your own crotch. A pulled muscle is a small price to pay to keep your masculinity.
9. If your wife or girlfriend ever says while watching football, "I just don't understand why they don't score more touchdowns," you have two possible responses:
a) Ignore her
b) Reply, "I just don't understand why we don't have sex more."
10. Be careful heckling minor-league baseball players, they have very little to lose and have bats in their hands. Heckle major-league baseball players remorselessly.
11. If you claim to have an "inside source" on any sports message board, odds are you either live with your mother or haven't had sex in over a year. Actually you're probably having sex with your mother.
12. Occasionally, apropos of nothing, put on a football helmet and spend all day wearing it in your office. When people ask you what you're doing say, "Just wearing a football helmet."
13. No matter how great your sports team is, every team has a player who is indefensible when someone makes fun of him. Think Manu Ginobili.
14. Should one of the hot cart girls on a golf course keel over from heatstroke in your presence, the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation may be performed in this order:
a) The married guy gets first dibs
b) The guy with the ugliest girlfriend gets second dibs
c) The guy who ordinarily trembles at the thought of speaking to a girl gets third dibs
d) At no point is knowledge of CPR to be considered
15. One man may never challenge another man to a pool handstand contest.
16. It's always funny on a burnout bench press set at the gym to wait until your buddy is completely burned out and is pinned beneath the bar to exclaim, "Explode!"
17. You may compare white NFL receivers only to Ed McCaffrey or Ricky Proehl. Cross-racial comparisons might upset the space-time continuum and cause cataclysmic destruction.
18. Everybody has at least one friend with very questionable hands when it comes to catching. When playing sports feel free to call this friend, "Hands."
19. Every man should know his legitimate forty time within .1 seconds.
20. If you are playing pickup basketball and wearing an ankle brace, you have to be at least twice as good as the worst player on the court.
21. Put this in your back pocket for the next time you hit on NFL cheerleaders: 90 percent of them are legitimately confused about why their team doesn't have that yellow first-down stripe like everyone else does. Answer this question and you can play just the tip later that night.
22. If you are a father, and your eight-year-old son scrapes his knee while playing outside, do not apply a Band-Aid or any sort of soothing salve. Instead, apply rubbing alcohol and dock a night of television from him for every tear shed. This will make him a very good linebacker.
23. If someone invites you to a game and then won't drink any beer because it's "not a microbrew" and won't eat a hotdog because he is on a diet, it is OK to ditch him to find another seat. You don't want to have to listen to him talk about his wife's venereal diseases she got screwing another guy during the game, anyway.
24. At no point can you legitimately believe any professional boxer truly sucks at fighting. This is because he would knock your chin through the back of your skull in four seconds, no matter how effeminate he looks in the ring.
25. If you ever break your arm while arm-wrestling, don't admit it. Just pretend the cracking noise was a fart and go cry in the men's room.
