Why does anyone go to an NFL game?

Okay, I’m from L.A. and we have no NFL team. So I know I’m not your typical fan. And today I watched games from Maui. But still, I’ve always wondered, as we’re now in Decemeber --

Why does anybody GO to football games when it’s freezing, snowing, raining, hailing, or all of the above? The games are on TV. In HD. You get closer angles, you get replays, you get that yellow line! How can we even follow a football game now if it doesn’t have that yellow line?

There was that Packer-Giants 2007 NFC championship game in Green Bay where it was something like twenty degrees below. Half the players got trench foot. And they were the lucky ones. Meanwhile, 72,740 people sat in the stands, frozen, for almost four hours. Why? Yeah, I understand the camaraderie and the excitement of being there live, but Holy Christ!! This is how Russian armies won wars – by freezing out their opponents, who by the way, wore just as many layers and passed around just as many flasks as loyal Cheeseheads.

I’m sure diehard fans will scoff and say I just don’t understand – and they would be right. A big-screen TV, a hot pizza, a roaring fire, a nearby bathroom (that’s CLEAN), a pause button, and the yellow line vs… frostbite.

And then there’s rain and snow. There’s nothing more fun than watching an NFL game in a blizzard or deluge. They should outlaw domes. With snow the field turns white, there’s zero visibility – it’s a beautiful thing. And in the driving rain the field turns to mud, no one can hold the ball, there’s fumbles every play, and if someone should miraculously catch a pass he then slides for ten yards. Uniforms get black, announcers have no idea who anybody is, hash marks disappear – now THAT’S entertainment!

But if you’re sitting in the stands, peeking out of ponchos or garbage bags and the rain and snow is pelting you too, doesn’t that put a tiny crimp in your enjoyment? Help me here. What am I missing, besides double pneumonia?

It’s not like baseball. People brave brutal weather conditions to attend playoff and World Series games but that’s so they don’t have to listen to Tim McCarver. I get that. But Chris Collingsworth is okay. Troy Aikman and Phil Simms are boring but they don’t send you screaming into the frozen tundra. And newcomer Jon Gruden is quite good.

I could do without the stupid animated transformers on FOX, GARY UNMARRIED promos on CBS, and NBC could cut their half-time roster of announcers by six and stop showing the Philadelphia Eagles (they've been on Sunday Night Football fifteen times already this season) but football is a television sport. And for you hearty souls who say drive four hours in grid-lock traffic to and from Foxboro and sit for four to six hours in torturous conditions, just consider this – the players you are watching are all getting millions of dollars. You paid for your seat. What’s wrong with this High-Definition picture?