The National Football League season has kicked in (Pun intended), and in full gear (Pun intended). Now, we can spend hours upon hours watching 22 men in tight uniforms fight over an oval-shaped thing made from pig skin.

In New Jersey, we love our Giants, Eagles and Jets, even though none of those teams are in our state. Talk about an identity crisis.

Folks have asked me what team I would sell my belongings for to afford their tickets. Ahhh, just pick one!

I was never a sports-kind ‘a guy. I know. Shocker. Watching overweight guys compete to get a ball into an apparatus never appealed to me. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire football game, or any other sports activity for that matter.

You gotta admit the athleticism is terrific, and competing toward a goal has been embedded in our nature since the Neanderthals This article says neanderthals were sprinters who lived with mammoth and woolly rhinos. I’m pretty sure I would sprint rather fast if either of those giant animals with horns were chasing me.

Back to football, American football. There are some weird rules related to this sport.

Take scoring for instance. A goal is six points (Why?). Then you kick the ball for an extra point (Why?). Then you have the field goal, which is three points (Why?). And a safety, which has nothing to do with safety, is two points (You get the idea). Then you have 11 players. Why is it not 10?

You also have the two-minute warning. Really? That’s what that number ticking down on clocks all over the stadium means?

Here is a good one: As you slam into a player trying to kill him, don’t do it from the back. Good. I always wanted to die by 700-pound monster, from the front.

Then you have things like roughing the quarterback. Again, really? You have 11 guys trying to tear their way toward him, and they are supposed to treat him with care upon arriving?

What takes the cake are the commercials. There is a commercial, or 15, every two minutes. You’re basically watching commercials with an intermittent football game in between.

To find out the origin of football, as I always do when researching these columns, I walked 17 miles barefoot in the snow to the library. I was stunned to learn that the first-ever football game was played in New Jersey!

In 1869, Rutgers took on Princeton in the first college football game. I would have thought that college football was invented in Alabama, my former home state.

College football down in Alabama is king. No, it’s the entire royal family. If you ask an Alabamian what NFL stands for, he will scratch his head, saying, “I reckon NFL stands for: Don’t act too big for your britches and throw a hissy fit. For Pete’s sake, you’re acting like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!”

Sometimes, I think football is the sports offspring of Roman gladiators trying to kill each other in coliseums back in the first century, except now, we act like civilized people and give them helmets before proceeding to kill each other.

I’ll end with this joke: What’s the difference between a (Inset football team) fan and a baby? The baby will stop whining after a while.

Being new to New Jersey, which team should I pledge allegiance to, along with my firstborn child and the note on my house?

Karim Shamsi-Basha may be reached at kshamsi-basha@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter & Instagram. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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