Hockey: the only sport I care about.

I recently learned a new sports metaphor: “moving the ball forward.”  Oh, I’d heard it before, and I had a vague idea that it meant making progress – or something along those lines – but I didn’t know it was about football.  You can laugh (and you will) but I’m just not a football fan.  (I remain confused about why a game with sixty minutes of playing time should take four hours.  That’s 25% playing, and 75% breaks.  Who has that kind of time?  Think about it.)  Anyway, I just learned this metaphor a few weeks ago and since then I’ve managed to overuse it until it has lost all meaning, because obviously.  I have to be me.

A client and I were joking about this very metaphor – “moving the ball forward” – the other day.  She couldn’t believe I’d only just figured it out, until I explained that I’m a hockey fan and there is no room in my heart for other games.  (Other sports are not nearly violent enough for me, apparently.  I’m very bloodthirsty.)  I bemoaned the fact that there aren’t really any common sports metaphors for the wannabe-Canadians among us and confessed that I’m now on a mission to learn more sports metaphors and overuse them.

The degree to which I am obtuse about sports metaphors is amusing, among other things, but it also raises a more serious point: sports, sports talk, and sports metaphors are a big part of the reason that many women still feel excluded or alienated in their male-dominated workplaces.  I’ve been lucky and escaped feeling excluded, to a large extent.  At my first job, I worked with mostly women, none of whom had much use for sports in general.  (There were a few guys there who were big hockey fans, and we bonded.  They liked the Rangers, but I didn’t hold it against them.  Nobody’s perfect.)  When I left that job and joined my firm, I was the only female attorney in the office (that is no longer the case), but I never felt left out.  The men in my current office are great guys who made me feel welcome right away, and while they’re all big sports fans, they never used sports to exclude me or tease me.

(Well, there was some gentle mocking when I picked Cornell to win March Madness.  But here’s the thing: I’m 4’11” and I can’t relate at all to basketball, so I have never followed it.  I could waste my time doing hours upon hours of research and I’d still be flying blind when it comes to March Madness picks.  I don’t stand a chance of winning.  So I might as well pick my alma mater.  They did make it to the Sweet Sixteen, which I always thought was a party.)

There are times when all-attorney meetings veer onto the subject of baseball, which most of the other attorneys in my office (including the women) follow passionately.  I don’t because, again, I am apparently too bloodthirsty.  (Now, if baseball players were allowed to fight…)  I sometimes tune out of those conversations, but I’m never teased or excluded based on my lack of participation, which says more about the people I work with than it does about me.

Not all of my friends are so lucky.  One of my closest friends, also a lawyer, was cruelly mocked at a business dinner for not being able to recite the rules of football.  She was put on the spot in front of her entire department by her boss, who – knowing she did not follow football – demanded that she explain the game, and then laughed at her when she couldn’t.  An extreme example, perhaps – but then again, perhaps not.  Women can’t be groped in the workplace anymore, or excluded for promotions based on their sex – at least, not legally – but they can be and often are made to feel out-of-place and embarrassed by not being “one of the guys.”  I’ve escaped this fate through a combination of personal luck (in that I found a job where I work with nice, friendly people who wouldn’t dream of making me feel unwelcome), hockey knowledge (at least I can talk intelligently about one sport), and the fact that my co-workers also read widely and enjoy international travel, so we have other conversation topics.

But just because it hasn’t affected me (yet) doesn’t mean that sports knowledge doesn’t contribute to many women’s personal glass ceilings.  Succeeding in many professions still demands at least a certain degree of behaving as if you’re “one of the guys.”  You don’t have to put up with harassment or laugh at misogynist jokes, but there are many women who help their careers immensely by participating in sports talk at work.  Even if you’re not passionate about athletics, it can often help to learn a few sports metaphors and scan the headlines of the sports page, especially if you’re in a male-dominated profession.  Here are just a few that I’ve heard (and subsequently looked up on Wikipedia, where there are TONS of examples on the “Sports Idioms” page):

• Moving the ball forward – making progress toward a larger goal.  (football)
• Drop the ball – make a mistake, screw up.  (football)
• Fumble – same thing.  (football)
• Hail Mary – last ditch, long-shot attempt.  (football)
• Play Monday morning quarterback – second-guess something after the fact.  (football)
• Run interference – handle something for someone else.  (football)
• Throw in the towel – surrender.  (boxing)
• Wheelhouse – area of expertise (baseball)

Unfair!, you shout.  Why should I have to learn about sports when they other people don’t have to learn about my interests?  Well, I agree, it is unfair, when you put it that way, but so is life.  And you don’t have to.  Some women find learning about sports useful when it comes to climbing their career ladders; some don’t.  For many people, there comes a point in your career when advancement depends on how well you can bond with people (especially the higher-ups), even more than the quality of your work – because everyone else is just as good as you, so what really matters is whether you can fit in.  Given that, learning about a topic that lots of men and women find interesting can only help you, right?  (I found a great blog – Talk Sporty to Me – which lists a bunch that I have never heard, and more that I was wondering about.)  Still, if it’s really painful for you, then you would be better served by bonding with your co-workers over topics you both enjoy, like traveling or current events.  But know that sooner or later, you’ll probably encounter a sports metaphor or two in your career, and it can’t hurt to know what they mean.  Just think of it as moving the ball forward when it comes to your career.

 Note: I don’t usually write about topics related to the workplace, since many of them touch upon what I do for my day job.  This was just something I was thinking over and wanted to write about.  So, to be on the safe side, I’ll just say that this post represents nothing more than my own personal opinion about a topic that’s been on my mind recently.  Please don’t construe this as legal advice or the official position of my firm, because it’s not.  Over and out.