The Draw Play

TIME TO JUDGE SOME GUYS

The Super Bowl is such a massive cultural event in America. It is one of the few things that can bring tons of people together, even those people who don’t particularly care about the purpose of the event itself. In any super bowl party you’ll find a lot of normies. Folks who have a tangential relationship to football and even sports in general. Some of them are just there to hang out. Honestly, most are just there to hang out. Many will be there to actually watch the game. Some are there for the movie trailers and ads, although the ads aren’t worth watching as much anymore. Many are there to see the halftime show. But every party will have a few of these guys. The worst guys. The guys who ruin the party for other people in some explicitly annoying way.

It is very possible you have been one of these guys. It’s okay. I have too. The important part is learning and growing from it.

-BRINGS NO FOOD BUT EATS ALL THE FOOD GUY
This guy showed up early, with maybe a single six-pack of the cheapest beer he could find to “share”, but immediately digs into the pizza and wings before the rest of the crowd can arrive. He’s cheap, he’s there for the food. He will grab the last slice, the final wings, and leave you with just the carrot sticks and blue cheese dressing. He will grab the best soda and beer from the cooler and shove any limited remaining cans into the ice or kitchen fridge to try and hide them for later. He will loudly suggest ordering more pizza in the second quarter, but will not do it himself. If you call him out, he will offer to venmo you later, and avoid you for the rest of the night hoping you forget. This guy is the bane of anyone who shows up later, having not yet eaten. If anyone claims to be hungry and that they haven’t eaten enough, you will see this guy slide deep into the background silently with shifting eyes.

-TAKES GAME FAR TOO SERIOUSLY GUY
This guy loves football, and likely has a team in the game itself. But he wants to WATCH THE GAME and he cannot stand all this distraction. He complains about not being able to hear the announcers and will frequently take charge of the remote. He takes the most central seat in the house in front of the screen and gets progressively angrier as the game goes on and more and more noise interupts him. By the second half nobody wants to talk to him because he’s too enveloped in the game itself to be any fun. If you are lucky, this guy will get so flustered that he will eventually move to a different room to watch it on a smaller TV with any other like-minded guys. If you aren’t lucky, he won’t stop telling everyone to shut up because he can’t hear, and then nobody wants to chat for fear of his wrath.

-ONLY HERE FOR THE HALFTIME SHOW GUY
There’s nothing really wrong with only watching the ads or the halftime show. Not everyone cares about football. The problem with this guy is he wants you to know it. He’s like the functional opposite of the previous guy, he demands everyone shut up on the commercial breaks and halftime show. He wants to cheer the movie trailers even though he watched them on youtube already. He will make everyone move to watch the halftime show and will spend the rest of the game loudly discussing the best halftime shows. Whenever the game comes back on, he makes a point to dismiss it.

-DOESN’T LIKE FOOTBALL GUY
A more extreme, deliberately contrarian version of the previous guy. This guy normally doesn’t even show up to Super Bowl parties and makes a big condescending post on social media about how the “Superb Owl” is dumb, handegg is bad, etc. But sometimes you’ll encounter one at an actual party for whatever reason. Maybe they are also there for the food, maybe they secretly want to belong but have the kind of ego that requires them to be “different”. Oftentimes they are just insecure, feel bad that they can’t talk to anyone about the game they don’t know very well, and they will eventually mellow out. Very common sight in high school and college-age situations, rarely seen as adults because they’ve either developed into a normal person who can hang or they developed into a person who genuinely just does ignore the game without making a show of it.

-LOUD GUY WHO DOESNT KNOW BALL
This guy also just wants to fit in but cannot admit he doesn’t know that much. He will loudly shout for penalties that aren’t there. You might engage this guy, because he wants to talk ball, but talking to him reveals he’s out of the loop. He will mention the names of players who are long gone from the team or even already retired. He will call out formations wrong, showing he’s just using buzzwords he’s picked up through cultural osmosis, like yelling RPO when the team runs a standard play action. He will parrot the announcers a lot and frequently copy the opinions of the actual smart football guy in the room. It’s okay to not know ball as well as other people, but this guy cannot bear the thought of not being the smartest or most impressive person in the room. He will fool anyone who also doesn’t know ball, and that’s how he survives, by faking intelligence of things other people don’t know. It is very satisfying to cut this guy down if he gets too obnoxious by loudly calling him dumb with evidence, but you gotta play your cards right to not look like the asshole.

-WONT GET OUT OF THE WAY GUY
Oh hey, I want to chat and hang out! What’s this, room to stand that is by the TV? Neat! This social butterfly guy is not there for the game at all, not even the ads, and subsequently appears to forget the game exists and just constantly walks in front of the screen. You are constantly trying to get him out of the way, to wave him off. He will eventually block the screen enough times to block an important moment for people watching and someone will snap at him, telling him to move out of the fucking way, and then he will pout and act offended and the person who snapped will be accused of being a jerk. The guy will finally get out of the way though.

-CHILL THE FUCK OUT, GUY
Kinda like loud guy or contrarian guy in that he wants attention but his method of getting that attention is to over-dramatize his reactions. He’ll throw his cup, do a spit take, punch a wall, and yell. Oh man will he yell. Everyone will hear him yell at every possible moment he can. You know those videos you see online of people who throw shit at their TV after a loss and stuff? That’s this guy. He’s rarely ever actually that mad, but he wants to make a show of it because he likes the attention it brings him, positive or negative. He calls himself passionate. Passionate about being a twat.

-GAMBLING GUY
Most Super Bowl parties have bets going. Almost every SB party I’ve gone to has a game of squares. Many people will have money on the silly prop bets and such. But there’s always one degenerate gambler who only cares about the game through the filter of what he has money on, and all of his reactions are acted out accordingly. If this guy’s bets start to go bad, he will make it everyone’s problem. Last year for Eagles/Chiefs, a guy at the party I was at clearly had a lot of money on the Eagles. He seemed like a douche to begin with, but while the Eagles were winning he was at least an acceptable guest. Once the Eagles started losing, he got real belligerent towards the game, yelling about the refs for calls, and it got to the point where I didn’t even want to celebrate the Eagles losing too loudly because this guy was bringing the energy down so hard and calling everything positive for the Chiefs absolute bullshit very loudly. Really ruined a lot of the vibe for the rest of us with his attitude towards a game where his only rooting interest was his wallet. Me and my wife spent the whole drive home talking shit about that guy. It’s fine to put money on the game and be annoyed if you lose, but there’s no need to be a dick and ruin other people’s day for it, that was your own bet you lost.

-ROOTS FOR THE OTHER TEAM OUT OF SPITE GUY
I saved this guy for last because I don’t think there is a worse type of guy. Most of these other guys are passively annoying. They have a general aura or habits of irritation and can be ignored or even cordially interacted with for the most part. But this guy. This guy is a troll. He has made it his entire personality for the night to directly antagonize you, and other people. He does not want to be your friend or chat, he wants to laugh at you. This guy isn’t common, but if you’ve ever interacted with this type of guy, you know. You know. He finds out what team you are pulling for and then directly proceeds to root against you. He will often pick multiple victims, oftentimes with contradicting interests, and still root against all of you, disregarding the contradictions. He has no moral standing or principles outside making other people irritated and will take any avenue to always come out on top to rub it in. If you get lucky and the side you root for in any of these situations ends up the victor, you can’t even celebrate or gloat because he will shrug it off, because he never actually cared about anything he was rooting for in the first place. He was doing it entirely to be a troll. Morals and stances and support are cringe to him. He is empty inside. He is an empty husk of a person who is without the ability to love. He is pathetic.

-The Dog
The dog is not bad. The Dog is in fact the best guy. Any party with a dog is a better party. Dogs rule.