BEN: It may not start officially on the calendars until Sept. 22, but last weekend fall officially began for me. Not because the air has cooled, the leaves have changed, or the kids are back in school. No, autumn began when I stepped inside Knoxville’s Neyland Stadium on a Saturday afternoon and found myself confronted with a sea of Orange. I was there to watch the Tennessee Volunteers play the greatest sport known to mankind: football.

I grew up in Knoxville, and needless to say it’s a football town. The six home games this year will find about 107,000 fanatics showing up for each one, while 10,000 more people will show up hoping to get a ticket and end up instead at a bar on campus. These people mean business. Sometimes I feel sorry for the residents of Knoxville who don’t care about football or the Volunteers. It must be like in First Blood, when Stallone’s drifter shows up in the small Northwestern town and is quickly run off for looking out of place.

So for you naysayers, let me explain why you can quit watching these half-assed pansy sports like baseball, basketball, and hockey. Football is a fight—it’s war. Two teams of 11 men face each other on a field; their abilities range from the tenacity and leadership of the quarterback to the sure-footed speed of the running backs to the remarkably agility of the wall of flesh that is the offensive line. All types of men are needed to work as a team; requiring a lot of organization, naturally, they find their mastermind in the coach—someone to put it all together in such a way that the other team doesn’t know what’s happened before the other guy’s in their end zone.

And that’s the real difference between football and all those other cute little competitions: strategy. Not only do you have to be a superior athlete, you have to plan like you’re in a game of chess. It’s a mixture of brain, brawn, and flat-out inspiration. All those other sports are just making it up as they go. Basketball is just a bunch of guys running back and forth, and how much ingenuity does it take for a 7-foot man to dunk a ball in a 10-foot basket? Ninety percent of baseball is standing around staring at the sun. How compelling. And hockey? Please, they skate. Football is America’s real pastime. It’s the pinnacle of everything the red-blooded American craves, what the late great Vince Lombardi referred to as controlled violence—the courting of man’s intellectual and barbaric sides at the same time. There’s nothing more thrilling or magnificent in sports today.

Until two years ago, John Ward was the voice of the Vol Radio Network. He provided the play-by-play commentary for the Volunteers for 30 years. Even though the action obviously goes unseen on radio, Ward’s play-by-plays epitomized the thrill of football. As a play unfolded, he’d give you the basic formation before the offense made its move. Then, when the ball was put in motion, his voice would escalate as the player started to make his way down the field. “To the 40...the 30...the 20...the 10....” And right when you expected him to scream, “Touchdown Volunteers!” he’d take a pause and in a tempered, building voice say, “Give...him...six!” At that moment, you shared in the player’s and the team’s accomplishment. That’s the magic of football, and why I can’t wait for it to start every year.

DANNY: I hate to play into the traditional female stereotype, but I could live the rest of my life without seeing another football game. I went to the University of Alabama for four years, and you haven’t had football shoved down your throat until you’ve had to write Paul W. “Bear” Bryant Drive as your return address, or walked into the bathroom in O’Charley’s and seen a memorial collage of past coaches hanging above the toilet. There was even a guy who requested to be buried in the graveyard across from the stadium in Tuscaloosa, in the plot closest to the game. Every year his family decorates the grave with crimson and white balloons and hangs a sign that says, “Strick says Roll Tide!”

Frankly, I don’t get it, and I don’t want to learn about it—never have and never will. Even now, I live within walking distance of Adelphia Coliseum, and all that game days mean to me is figuring out the best and least painful escape route from East Nashville. But I must say that I’ve never seen Ben write so passionately about anything—and I’m noticing how it’s changed Nashville for the better in the last couple of years—so I know football has to have a redeeming quality. Somewhere.

But I can’t agree with him that football is the superior sport, because all sports boil down to the same thing. Guys hitting a ball as far as they can, kicking a ball into a net, or running with it from one end of a stadium to the other—big deal. I think the most appealing thing about football is that, at least for guys, it’s the best of both worlds. They can be in the stands, face-painted, bare-chested, and screaming like a banshee, but they can also be on the field, running and tackling, passing and scoring—living and playing the game vicariously through the players. I asked my friend Steve what the draw was. He said, “I played football from when I was a little kid all the way through high school. I messed up my ankle, my knee, cracked two ribs, and dislocated my shoulder more times than I can count. I don’t think football’s great on the body, but I’d mortgage everything I have twice just to do it all over again.”

And even though it all seems sort of inane and animal, I can’t really come down too hard on football because it’s one of the few things that brings people together in a positive way for a common cause. Look at all the things it has brought to our fair city—revenue, nationwide attention and respect, and a big reason to slowly but surely clean up East Nashville. Sure, it’s all about sponsors and commercial airtime, and ticket prices are inflated, but last season I watched a father and his 6-year-old son hold hands as they crossed the street in their matching Titans jerseys on their way to the stadium. An event that makes that happen can’t be all bad.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa., during the heyday of the Steelers’ Super Bowl sweep, so I know what a winning team can do for a city. Even my sister and I, though we were constantly at war as kids, would come together and wad up pieces of paper for my Dad to throw in anger at the TV. And though I didn’t understand what was going on then, and I still don’t now, there’s something comforting about just having a game on in the background if I’m at home cooking or cleaning or just walking around the house doing stuff. And Ben’s right: It wouldn’t be fall without football. So just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing.

E-mail questions and comments to oppositesex@nashvillescene.com.