Football fanatics and the men who love them

There is the football fan who feels the anticipation building as the start of each NFL season nears, dreams of Sundays in front of TVs at home or in bars sharing a few drinks with friends as the games play out on the screens before them.

And then there is Claudia Rodriguez.

Claudia Rodriguez with her brother Tom at the World Championship of Fantasy Football draft in Las Vegas.  She finished 17 out of 480 competitors, and highest among women.

Starting in June, Rodriguez, 41, starts digging into fantasy football magazine, spending about 30 minutes per weeknight and at least a few hours on the weekend buried in the projected player rankings. The week before the season starts is reserved for research — she takes off from her job as a claims manager — for the draft in her four fantasy football leagues.  And once the football season starts, Sundays become a routine that start with checking injury reports at 8 a.m. before settling in for 12 hours in front of the TV and computer. 

Her husband usually takes their 9-year-old daughter hiking, or at least out of Claudia’s way.  “He does not want to see me on Sunday,” she said.  “He takes my daughter and they go.”

Rodriguez is what one marketing exec with the NFL refers to as the “super avid” fan, and although this labeled is stereotypically reserved for members of the male population, more and more women are coming down with football fever, while the men in their lives must play the role of supporting spouse.

“It’s the kind of thing guys talk about, but when you actually get it, it's not so great,” said Michael Pusateri. His wife Michele, a die-hard Bengals fan, does not disagree.

Being a wife who is obsessed with football is “the worst,” she says.  “My husband is quite the widower during football season.”

‘The only reality television’
Approximately 375,000 women attend professional football games each weekend, with more than another 45 million watching on television, according to the NFL.  In poll after poll, women repeatedly choose football as their favorite professional sport. In a 2006 Harris poll, 30 percent of women chose the NFL as their favorite, 14 percent chose the MLB, and 10 percent chose college football.

Michele Pusateri, 42, is already counting down the weeks until the opening of the 2007 NFL season.

“The more I watch it, the more real it is,” she said.  “Anything can happen on any given Sunday… It’s the only reality television.”

During the week, Michele, a stay-at-home mother of two in Los Angeles, is busy running errands, driving carpools and keeping the household running.  But during the 17 Sundays of the regular NFL season – and sometimes Saturdays and Monday nights, too – the chaos of daily life is drowned out by the play calls of the 32 teams she can watch from the comfort of her living room, thanks to her NFL Sunday ticket.  Meanwhile, the responsibility of watching the girls, making the meals and even answering the phone and holding conversations with friends who may stop by, falls to her husband Michael.

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