Column: A simple goal for the fall ... fulfilling his football fetish

My spouse called me out the other day for what she called “emotional infidelity.” Specifically, she cited football.

Yes, football. Beyond an obsession, it’s more like America’s mass fetish. Football noir.

My buddy Scott told me recently: “I see the NFL for exactly what it is — and I like it anyway.”

It’s always been a brutal, bombastic, bloated league. Well, they all are, all the leagues, but the NFL wins the brutal-bloated-bombastic top prize. The players appear to be mostly misfits, bullies or unemployed reggae singers.

NFL coaches, meanwhile, are the biggest collection of gut-twisted middle-managers you ever met, the kind of slugs who tailgate you in their luxe SUVs, then snarl as they lurch past, the world never moving briskly enough.

Speaking of decent men ...

“49ers sources believe Jim Harbaugh losing locker room,” tweets an NFL website.

To which I respond: “Then get another locker room!”

Say for a minute that you’re one of those dysfunctional team owners, and you couldn’t hire Pete Carroll. Wouldn’t Harbaugh be next on your list?

Citing Harbaugh’s tough-love style, an NFL scribe said: “[The players] have dealt with a lot the last couple of years.... Because they are winning, they are fine with it, but some of the players wonder, if they lose, will it all spiral out of control?”

Dude, when you lose, it always spirals out of control. I once went 5-5 as the coach of a 2-foot-tall soccer team, and two of the parents hanged me in effigy. One was our pastor.

So, I’ll go out on a limb here: Stick with Mr. Harbaugh a tad longer. If you want to hang him in effigy, at least wait until he goes 12-4.

By the way, I love how our kids talk about “binge viewing” their favorite cable shows. You know who invented binge viewing? Dads did, on perfect fall weekends. Know what made them perfect? Football.

What do I know from baseball. The closest I ever got to baseball greatness was an unassisted triple-entendre.

But football? Pretty much everyone can pitch the pigskin. On the beach, there are short periods — 30 seconds maybe — where I can look a little like Jay Cutler. Never, even in his worst moments, would I ever look a little like Mike Trout.

We love football because it is easy, accessible and still the best excuse to gather friends for a bowl of the greatest chili ever.

Nebbishy and gluten-fearing, we need football to send us out to play in the sun again.

Speaking of sun, stopped by the Rose Bowl the other day. September tailgates must be a penance we impose on ourselves for all the bad things we will do in October and November, when the frisky fall weather finally arrives.

Till then, tailgates are a big, sweaty mess. I once went to a USC game in which they were grilling burgers directly on some sophomores’ non-stick foreheads.

Still I go, because like me, my children love football, so I treat them to the Lawry’s tent at the Rose Bowl, which is open to the public, unlike so many of those alumni tents that dropouts like me can never get into.

Lawry’s puts on a decent spread: open bar, prime rib, chicken and a gumbo that, to be fair, is actually a jambalaya. But it’s early in the season, so I make allowances.

Then into the steamy Rose Bowl we go, thankful it’s a 7 p.m. kickoff, and thankful also this will be the last UCLA home game until October, when my cleansing internal organs will no longer bake in the heat.

I don’t know the name of the UCLA pre-game march, something by Wagner probably, for it gives us goose bumps all the way up in the nosebleed seats.

It was amazing, this Hessian war dance, worthy of an invasion. I half expected a hologram of Ludwig von Falkenhausen to crawl over the scoreboard, yet the only legendary warriors to appear were the Tigers of Memphis and the Bruins of Westwood.

And when that finally happened, when the fans had reached fever pitch, or passed out from heat stroke, into the stadium the youngsters sprinted, following cheerleaders carrying flags that billowed like spinnakers.

Somehow, even in that soupy heat, I still get shivers. It’s football season, after all...the only sport that doesn’t go on way too long.

And like my buddy, I see football for what it is — and I like it anyway.