The most important part of professional sports is the food. In fact, anthropological studies indicate that throughout human history the progression of different ingredient combinations to create a given dish directly relates to our universal desire to ingest something delicious while watching someone else compete.
It’s kind of a parasympathetic nervous system/psychological situation where we empathize with the loss of calories the competitor experiences, so our brain stem tells our hands to dip the Fritos in the Cheez Dip then maybe some Five Alarm Chili and wash it all down with an ice-cold beer, like a nice clean, crisp pilsner. Mmmmmmmm, God we love icy cold beer.
Like most things in life it all traces back to our caveman ancestors: Approximately 15,000 years ago Glorb, Ignot and Zrrg sat in their cave entrance munching on Flintones-sized chicken legs, watching poor (but fast) Ungr run like hell, back to the cave, with the day’s berry harvest in a banana-leaf woven basket and an enraged sabre toothed tiger hot on his tail, snarling, thick sputum covering its hungry, horrible face. And the beast, mad with hunger, steadily gains ground, five yards for every yard earned by Ungr, and the tension builds, now Ungr can feel the creature’s hot breath on the back of his legs it’s so close, hear the thud of each huge paw striking the earth, tearing at the soft clay in its desperation to reach and devour, and Glorb, Ignot and Zrrg don’t really want Ungr to get eaten but damn isn’t this fun to watch and can you pass the chips?
Thus, the birth of competitive sport-watching, and the culinary delights behind it.
You may be:
- Sitting around for roughly seven months re-watching old Super Bowls as you wait for the NFL season to start (and occasionally checking out NFL.com, which only serves a placeholder for boring stories about intra and inter-league drama during the offseason, coupled with completely ridiculous “way too early predictions” for the upcoming season which the writers/contributors are likely happy to produce just to stay employed since absolutely nothing is going on).
- Watching a weekly bocce ball game at a park where the court/empty patch of grass is covered in geese droppings and cigarette butts and the old guys playing may be in the Mafia but it’s hard to tell and you kind of hope they are.
- Actually at a venue – letsee here like Moda Center – which, as of this writing, is empty because the Trail Blazers were in that whole “win or go home” situation and they lost so now they’re home, sitting around, sad, in their mansions. Which are pretty good places to be sad in, especially considering their private chefs are probably serving them all the stuff they couldn’t eat during the regular season, like beef Wellington* and foie gras**.
*Beef Wellington is beef tenderloin or filet mignon coated with pate, duxelles (mushrooms and herbs sauteed in butter), wrapped in puff pastry, then baked. It’s like a corn dog for rich people.
**Nobody know what foie gras is.
Whatever you’re watching, your hypothalamus is telling you sports equals food, and food equals sports, so dive into some sports related foodstuffs. Don’t fret about it. Swimsuit season is overrated. And you’re probably married or otherwise in some form of tense, weird, way too heavy, I-Thought-It-Was-A-Fling relationship, so feel free to really let yourself go.
Just don’t look online for your game time meal inspiration. Other than right here of course, online right here is a nice, warm, cuddly, safe, empathetic place that frequently compliments your shoes. Everywhere else online is enraging.
Case in point, we received a federal grant for $650,000 and convened a group of scientists from the University of Oregon and Oregon State to produce a study to determine what happens when a 25 to 45-year-old, metropolitan dwelling, professional, really attractive female, who’s okay with married guys…oh wait sorry that was for something else. This study was to determine what happens when sports fans type “Best Foods to Watch Sports” in a Google search bar. Or possibly a DuckDuckGo search bar.
Also, the University of Oregon and Oregon State scientists just ended up smoking cannabis the whole time and talking about John Muir, so we had to kick them out and hire scientists from the University of Washington and Washington State. Which was only marginally better, as these folks also smoked lots of cannabis and just droned on and on about socialism. So we found scientists from Renton Technical College and an online forum in Eastern Europe: these folks were great. It turns out the future of education lies with technical schools and online education platforms.
The results of the study, whose budget quickly ballooned to $1.1M, are as follows, according to the final report:
“When typing in ‘Best Foods to Watch Sports’ into a Google or other listing site’s search bar, no matter how cute and appealing this other listing site’s social mission is, we, the Scientists of Greater Renton and Greater Albania Online, conclude the following happens.
- A series of unhelpful, SEO-friendly stories appear, as evidenced by15 Foods For Tailgating and Watching Sports, published by The Good Men Project. Top menu items include chili – ‘a cold weather favorite,’ guacamole, and chicken wings.
As scientists we won’t even bother testing our hypothesis that literally ever sports fan in America already understands chili, guacamole and chicken wings are fun to eat while watching sports, fun to eat in the middle of the night, fun to eat at a picnic, fun to eat while signing a mortgage agreement, fun to eat when finding out you’re getting a divorce, and fun to eat in general, making this information redundant at best.
- Frequently utilized, similar past search inquiries made by the general public pop up, the most prominent of which is What should I eat while watching football?
As scientists who benefit from the large federal grants produced in the United States, we’d like to officially go on the record and state this kind of phraseology is a threat to National Security.
First, if U.S. citizens are truly asking a cold, dead, computer algorithm what to eat before watching what amounts to the United States’ Constitution in action because they’re so worried that if they don’t curate the absolutely perfect “dish” the experience won’t be maximized and they won’t have content to publish on Instagram, you might as well just hand over your great country back to England and be all like, ‘We tried. It’s too hard.’
Secondly, this frequent past search inquiry only yields more SEO-friendly information/menu items from banal articles in the liberty-stealing, autocrat-inspiring, Stalinist digital and print magazine/anarchist rag Men’s Health, as evidenced by their suggestion that the best foods for watching sports are…
- Grilled hot dogs
- Beer nuts
- Pizza bagel bites
- Massive meatballs
- Peach and brie quesadillas
Peach and brie quesadillas may sound good to the THC-infused, munchie afflicted scientists at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, University of Washington and Washington State University, but we here in the real scientific community can prove they are truly gross. And, not unlike The Good Men Project results, the rest of the list is quite obvious, unhelpful, and redundant.
Do you have any more grant money? Thank you.
-The Scientists”
So the big takeaway is to not conduct general online searches for deliciousness as they only yield demand generation marketing tactics by communist organizations. Instead pick one of the following well researched, delicious things to eat while watching tennis, golf, baseball, playoff basketball or playoff hockey. There may be other sports going on right now, we’re not sure, but you get the idea:
- The donut burger – juicy burger patty served in the middle of a glazed donut, topped with American cheese, crispy applewood bacon and spicy cherry pepper jam
- Asada dog – 18-inch, grass-fed beef hot dog tucked into a Telera roll – similar to a French roll – with fries, queso blanco, salsa, the appropriate use of guacamole, and carne asada for double meatiness
- Fat’s chicken sandwich – five spice fried chicken thigh on a perfectly dense bun served with poutine, mac and cheese, and rice topped with Andouille sausage gravy
- Any kind of lobster roll
- S’mores bacon on a stick – perfectly fried bacon dunked in chocolate and rolled in a crushed gram cracker and marshmallow mixture
Obviously it’s easier to find this stuff at a major sports venue, which we gratefully can now start attending. In the meantime, we’re not sure how to make any of this at home, but you seem like both a culinary enthusiast and a bright person, so we’re confident you can figure it out