The Super Bowl Is Just 60,000 Men Asking for Hugs
My dear sister-in-law, Heather, watched the Super Bowl this year and offered live commentary that reframed the entire sport in one sentence:
“Football is just a series of hugs fulfilling men’s needs for twelve hugs a day.”
Once she said it, there was no un-seeing it.
Every play: men running toward each other at full speed, colliding, falling down, then immediately holding each other tightly before standing up and doing it again. Over. And over. And over.
This is not a critique.
This is a revelation.
Because if you strip away the helmets, the branding, the militarized language, and the beer commercials, football starts to look like a culturally sanctioned ritual where men are finally allowed to touch each other, with intensity, purpose, and emotion, without having to explain themselves.
Consent, Actually
Then there are the penalties: Holding, Illegal contact, Unnecessary roughness, Personal foul, Excessive Celebration, etc.
The entire rulebook is basically one long conversation about consent.
You can touch him, but only in this way.
You can hug him, but not after the whistle.
You can grab him, but not there.
You can express aggression, but only inside these clearly defined relational boundaries.
When someone violates those boundaries, a flag is thrown. The game stops. Everyone reassesses. In other words: relational repair is built into the structure. If only we did this so clearly in our marriages.
Attachment Styles, But Make It Pads and Helmets
Once you’re tracking hugs, you can’t help but notice how they happen. And suddenly, attachment theory shows up on the field.
Avoidant Hugs
The quick tap.
The one-arm shoulder bump.
“I was here, technically.”
These are the players who disengage immediately, already scanning for the next task. Touch happened, but connection did not linger.
Anxious Hugs
The extra squeeze.
The delayed release.
The one who stays on the ground a beat too long.
These hugs say, “Are we good? Are you still with me? Did that mean something?”
Secure Hugs
Solid contact.
Mutual pressure.
Easy separation.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing rushed. Everyone knows where they stand. These players trust the rhythm of connection and release.
Disorganized Hugs
Too hard, too fast, or totally mistimed.
Confusing intensity.
Often followed by… a penalty.
These are the moments when the nervous system floods, regulation collapses, and the body doesn’t quite know what it’s doing anymore.
Sound familiar?
Why Men Love Football: Touch, Regulation, and Belonging
Men in our culture are often starved for:
Safe physical contact
Clear roles
Predictable rules
Belonging without emotional exposition
Permission to express intensity
Football gives all of that. It says: You may touch. You may struggle. You may fall apart for a moment. And then you will be held by someone who understands the same language. No one asks them to explain their feelings. The body gets to speak first. From a nervous-system perspective, this isn’t entertainment. It’s co-regulation in pads.
The Satirical Truth That Isn’t a Joke
So yes, it’s funny to say the Super Bowl is just men getting their daily hugs in. But it’s also heartbreakingly true. Because when the game ends, many of those men go home to lives where:
Touch can be rare
Emotion can be privatized
Repair can be undefined
And no one throws a flag when things get unsafe
What if we learned from the field?
What if we normalized touch with consent?
What if we recognized that intensity doesn’t mean danger?
What if we treated conflict as something that happens inside a container, not as the destruction of connection?
Football accidentally figured this out.
The rest of us are still pretending we don’t need the hug.
Overtime
In many adult lives, emotion is allowed, but only in private. You can feel things, as long as you handle them alone. You can be sad, angry, scared, overwhelmed, just don’t bring it into the room. Don’t let it affect anyone else. Don’t need too much. Don’t make it relational.
This is what it means when emotion is privatized. It’s not that feeling is forbidden. It’s that feeling is treated as a solo responsibility. When emotion has to be handled alone, it doesn’t really end. It just runs long. It goes into overtime.
From a nervous-system perspective, this is a mismatch. Humans are wired for co-regulation. Our bodies settle in the presence of others. Emotion isn’t just an internal experience, it’s a signal meant to be received. When emotion is forced into isolation, it doesn’t disappear. It lingers. It hardens. It leaks out sideways as irritability, shutdown, numbness, or sudden intensity that seems to come from nowhere.
Many men, especially, are taught early that needing comfort is weakness, that touch must be earned or justified, and that regulation means self-control rather than shared safety. So emotion goes underground. It becomes private property. And private emotion tends to run past regulation. This is why environments that allow physicality, shared intensity, and predictable repair feel relieving, even if no one names what’s happening. The body finally gets to do what it knows how to do: move toward another body and settle.
The cost of living in emotional overtime is quiet but real. Relationships become lonely. Conflict feels dangerous. People feel ashamed for wanting to be held, literally or emotionally. Emotion was never meant to be managed alone. It was meant to be met, before it ever had to go into overtime.
A Final Reflection
Many of the patterns described here: intensity that escalates quickly, conflict that feels disproportionate, a longing for connection that’s hard to name, tend to surface most clearly in intimate relationships.
Craig McAdams, LPCC, works with couples and individual men who are seeking something more nuanced than communication strategies alone. His approach is grounded in attachment theory and nervous system regulation, helping people understand what’s happening beneath the conflict so real repair can become possible.
This work is quiet, relational, and deeply intentional.
If you’re curious to explore whether this kind of therapy might be supportive for you or your relationship, you’re invited to learn more below.
