Fieldnotes

I have an impossibly strong curiosity about football players.

I attribute this to my having attended an all-girls high school where field hockey and softball were the big sports and the players wore skirts or basketball shorts instead of those sexy tight white tights.

Because of this curiosity, I spend many a cafeteria-hour observing these big beefy guys interact with one another. I consider myself an undercover anthropologist studying a culture foreign to me. I'm not sure that what I've unearthed so far would rock anyone's world but I find it curious.

Today, for instance, I found myself sitting with a bunch of them. One of them pointed at a woman who works in the cafeteria and said to his teammates how one of their buddies said to her "Bet you never had a man shove you up against a wall and fuck you" or something equally vulgar. They all kind of laughed.

I turned from my copy of The Bell Jar and asked if all football players talk like that, and shared with them an incident when, again I had been sitting near a group of them, and two white boys asked a black boy when he would take them to a party so they could get some black chicks. The one kept saying he wanted to fuck a black girl.

They laughed at this. I told them I understand boys will be boys but jeez! And one of them said, "We don't all talk like that." And another said something about the effects of testosterone.

Then most of these boys rose from the table and their seats were taken by other football players. One of these, a gorgeous white boy whose identity I can't figure out, asked his teammate who sat next to me -- who is pretty gorgeous himself -- if he was going to the women's basketball game on Saturday. Apparently it's mandatory but the white boy's birthday is this weekend and he had plans with his family (I know, I too was swooning just a little).

Once they'd discussed this, the white boy talked about how at a charity date auction, he was almost bought by a man. This apparently scarred him. Just a tiny bit. Another teammate was in fact bought by a man and this, the white boy said, had Coach "G" cracking up.

Oh, and he pointed out to his teammates that the team's kicker, a sexy freshman, was bought for only $15.

I'm only upset I hadn't known about this auction.

During most of this conversation, I listened and occasionally watched and the white boy looked at me a few times but never said anything... Same for most of the guys he sat with. They glanced at me but no one said anything.

I wonder if football players wait for girls to approach them...

Another thing I've learned about these attractive young men: The few that have girlfriends don't really advertise it on their Facebooks; most of their profiles say they're single.

I know because I've met some of their girlfriends. At the bowl game (the EagleBank Bowl), I sat in front of a group of football players' girlfriends.

The most interesting thing they unveiled while enjoying the evening? Most of them have a hard time getting their boys to go down on them and threaten no sex until they do so...

I want to know more. (Oh, and my favorite football player was nowhere to be seen.)