Apparently, I harbor an inner redneck. Earlier this week, I blogged about country music, and today I'm blogging about football, both of which I like a great deal. I'm not sure how all of this meshes with my musical theater–loving New York ways, but I guess we all have our contradictions. Happily for me, my girlfriend tolerates the country music (and the showtunes) and embraces football. So we do OK. I'm mentioning all of this right now, of course, because this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and I will be rooting for my hometown Giants. (Although my regular season team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.)

Despite the emergence of numerous women's professional football leagues over the years (you can check out a pretty good history here), football is a guy sport. Women can and do play, but next to nobody pays attention — including me. While I generally like women's sports more than men's, I simply cannot get into women's pro football. But I do like women in football movies when I can find them. Here are the very, very few.

1. Tami Maida — Quarterback Princess (1983)

I'll bet I wasn't the only young adolescent who developed a crush on Helen Hunt in her turn as high school quarterback Tami Maida. I had already seen her on Family, The Facts of Life and that ABC Afterschool Special, Desperate Lives, where she jumps out the window while on angel dust. But in Quarterback Princess, she played some football and crusaded for the rights of girl athletes everywhere. Of course, she also made a point of how straight she was. And how she didn't like other boy things, like logging. But still, both Helen Hunt and the real Tami Maida were pretty cool. … continue reading

Dateline: 7/7/07 7:00 p.m.
Where: Cupples Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA
Who: Cleveland Fusion (8-2) versus Pittsburgh Passion (10-0)
What: National Women's Football Association Northern Conference final game

When I initially noticed the plethora of 7's associated with this match-up, I told my girlfriend Caty, "Either mystical forces are aligning themselves for this game or they're not." Then she looked up from whatever she was doing and said, "Thanks for that prognostication, Sylvia Browne." All smarty-pants snark aside, the repeating 7's gone crazy had my spidey sense tingling. I'd never been to a professional women's football game, so to lose the last vestiges of whatever innocence I have left at a conference championship game elevated my excitement level by infinity.

Keep in mind that when I was in high school, we had a single powder puff flag football game every year pitting the seniors against the juniors. I played wide receiver and linebacker both years and loved it. But the thing is, apart from pick-up games and the annual powder puff "classic," to play football on any level for far too long you had to be a guy. I'm happy to say that this is no more! There are two, count 'em, TWO professional women's football leagues: the aforementioned NWFA, whose season ends July 21 in Nashville with their league-wide championship game, aka the Battle of the Best, and the Women's Professional Football League, whose season starts August 18. … continue reading