Sports Nut: The I Formation

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Sports Nut The I Formation My friends hate watching football with me. I couldn't be happier. By Luke O'Neil Posted Friday, Nov 18, 2011, at 05:35 PM ET Though pro football has never been more popular on television, attendance in NFL stadiums has decreased for four straight years. The arguments in favor of watching at home are plentiful: It's cheaper, easier to park, and the view on your HD flat screen is better than from your stadium seat. Despite all of those obvious advantages, attendance has been similarly pitiful at my apartment this season. If my football get-togethers were games, they'd be blacked out more often than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Why can't I get anyone to watch football with me? Your first guess is probably that my friends don't enjoy my company, and you'd be right. But I also find myself turning down other people's invitations and opting for a hermitic approach to football Sundays. It used to be a given that my friends would meet up at someone's house each week. And this year, only four out of 12 of us bothered to show up for our fantasy draft barbecue. The Bowling Alone effect isn't just for participatory sports any more. In this age of fantasy football and DVR, rooting for your favorite team has become a pastime that's best enjoyed by yourself, hunkered down in a fandom isolation chamber. We are now millions of audiences of one. Some of the reasons I prefer to keep to myself are as old as fandom itself. The inherent shamefulness of overzealous rooting—guilty as charged—causes me to duck ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Tea Party Is Making the Supercommittee's Miserable Task Even Worse Why There Are So Many Female Spies on Television Peter Nadas' New Novel Contains a 200-Page Sex Scene	Advertisement
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