This Sunday is the Super Bowl. It’s kind of a big deal here in America: Last year’s game was the most-watched television event of all time, with 111 million viewers.

But Columbia is a diverse community, and it would be silly to assume that everyone here knows or cares about the big game. Nonetheless, it’s going to be difficult to avoid seeing or at least hearing about it this weekend. Maybe you’re wondering how you can get through the game without embarrassing yourself in front of your friends.

Or maybe, in a foolish attempt to impress your girlfriend, you told her that you played quarterback in college when in fact the only thing you know about football is “touchdowns are how you score points and sometimes you kick the ball,” and now you are so desperate to avoid being caught in the lie that you have taken to Craigslist for help.

We can’t help our Craigslist fabulist, but for the rest of you, here are some suggestions to help you get through the big game. These tips, painstakingly assembled over many years of not knowing very much about football, have gotten me through many a Super Bowl and I hope they will be just as helpful for you.

The game of football

Football is played on a field that kind of looks like one of the lawns in front of Butler, except that a football field is way longer, way wider, and surrounded by drunk people.

A game is played between two teams, and lasts through four fifteen-minute segments, called quarters. But football games actually take much longer than an hour to get through because, duh, Doritos commercials. Also, the actual amount of time that anything is happening on the field is much, much less than an hour — there are about 11 minutes of actual play in an average game. But don’t ever point this out to people who care about football because they will just get pissed off at you and go off on a rant about how baseball sucks.

Anyway, the objective of a football game is to be the team with the most points at the end of the game. Teams primarily score points by either of two different means: touchdowns (getting to the end of the field with the ball) and field goals (kicking the ball through the big yellow Y-shaped thing). And that’s all we’re going to talk about as far as the rules and mechanics of play go. If you want to know about that, there’s a Wikipedia page for it. This is a guide to faking your way through the game without actually having to know very much.

1. Know the quarterbacks

You really don’t have to know any of the other players on either team, but you must know the names of both quarterbacks and you are required to hate at least one of them (loathing each of them is also acceptable). A football game is the only time in life when, after seeing a man get brutally thrown to the ground by three other men at least twice his size, shouting “Maybe that’ll teach him!” is a perfectly acceptable response.

This year’s quarterbacks are Tom Brady (for the New England Patriots) and Eli Manning (for the New York Giants). They’re both very talented athletes, but that is not important. What you need to remember is that Eli Manning has a huge ego and Tom Brady is dumb and/or kind of a jerk. Remember, whichever team you decide to root for, you need to talk incessantly throughout the game about why you hate the other team’s quarterback. This is extremely useful when you don’t know exactly what is happening on the field — just say something like, “Did you see that look Eli just gave the ref? What a douche!” and no one will ever suspect.

2. Hindsight is 20/20…use it!

If you’re not too sure about football, talking aloud about what you think your team should do is a recipe for disaster. You are bound to say something that doesn’t make any sense. On the other hand, talking about what your team should have done is both easy and universally accepted. Just wait until your team screws something up and then say that they should have done the exact opposite of whatever they did. For example, if it was a running play, clench your fists in frustration and exclaim “Ugh! Why didn’t they pass it!” This always works.

Also: don’t say your team should try any strategies just because they’ve worked for you in a video game. I made this mistake once and apparently “Never ever punt no matter what” is a really, really bad gameplan.

3. Halftime

Do not suggest changing the channel to the Puppy Bowl during halftime, even if the commercial does describe it as “the ‘ruff-est’ game of the year.” Making this mistake is the surest possible way to expose yourself as “not really a football fan.” This is true even if the halftime show sucks (the halftime show always sucks).

4. Penalties

There are a lot of rules in football, and breaking those rules can result in penalties for the offending team. You’ll know if there’s a penalty on a given play because the referee (those guys who look like Foot Locker employees) will throw a yellow flag. Penalties almost always result in moving the ball so that the offending team is in a less advantageous field position. There are way too many possible penalties to go into here, but if you watch the game and want to seem knowledgable, you will be expected to shout out your guess for what the penalty is every time one is called. Just memorize this list, make your guess based on when during the play the flag was thrown, and you’ll be fine:

a. Before the play has started: Offsides or false start. Possibly delay of game but you should not guess this unless you see a little clock on your tv screen that has ticked down to :00 before the play started.

b. During the play, while someone has the ball: Holding

c. During the play, after a pass is thrown but was not caught: Pass interference.

Also, if something ever happens to your team that is not good, but no penalty is called, you should always scream “WHERE’S THE FLAG?!?”

5. After the game

The winning quarterback will announce that he’s going to Disneyland and the winning coach will have a bucket of Gatorade dumped on him. The losing team will leave the field quickly while their marching band plays an altered, insulting version of their fight song.

If your team won, it is because they played excellent football all season long and were simply the best team in the NFL this year. They deserved it, and no one with any sense could argue otherwise.

If your team lost, the winning team got lucky, the refs were bribed, some of your key players were injured (physically, psychologically, or spiritually), the sun was in their eyes, the Patriots are cheaters (for Giants fans), or the Giants buy all the good players and are basically the Yankees of football (for Pats fans).

And that’s it.

It’s by no means a complete guide to the game of football, but it should get you through a couple hours on Sunday. If I missed any good advice, feel free to add it in the comments. Go Pats! Or Giants. It doesn’t make much difference to me.