I tell them that a game of footy is as entertaining as an AC/DC concert or a Johnny Depp movie or a Comedy Festival show. It is primarily an excuse to exit my own life and enter one created by others for two or three hours.
While the alternatives follow a script to some degree, an AFL game unfolds as the result of 36 people pitting their individual and collective ideas to create a drama and a narrative that can never be predicted.
Take a close look at that famous photo of Leo Barry taking the match-winning mark in those final seconds of the Sydney Swans premiership triumph in 2006. Each player in the eight-man pack has his eyes fixed in a different direction; each apparently certain where the ball is headed. But only one of them got it right.
So if players who are good enough to be playing in a grand final don't know precisely what's going to happen next, or where the ball is going to fall, how can we in the crowd have a clue?
We can't, and that's what I love about footy.
The canteen lady at your workplace who does her entire season's footy tips before the first round is as much a chance to win as the obsessive fan who studies every player's statistics and each team's scores from one game to the next. It's an infuriating, addictive and exhilarating game.
It provides constant examples of people achieving things that we couldn't or wouldn't, no matter how hard we tried or how much we wished as a kid: Daniel Giansiracusa's miraculous soccer-style goal for the Bulldogs in the first round of this season, or the Saints' new kid Clinton Jones having time to see the deathly danger ahead as he ran with the flight of the ball for a mark and choosing to go for it anyway.
Footy, like a pop or rock song, can sneak up on you too. A fresh song will play out of the car beside you at the lights, it will play in the fish and chip shop while you wait for your burger with the lot, it will blare from your TV on a Saturday morning as you clean up after the friends you had around last night, then suddenly it will come on the radio and you'll discover you're singing all of the words without knowing you knew them.
I know how far players from teams I don't even barrack for can kick when watching them line up for a shot for goal, and I know how accurate they are from certain positions on the ground, and I know whether or not they'll contest a hard ball, often without having seen them play a whole game.
It's because I'll see footy on the news, and on a replay in the pub, and I'll absorb what the commentators say when I'm half listening in my car, and my retentive memory stores it all away without me being actively aware of it.
My girlfriend has often wondered aloud how the hell I can remember which part of Ireland Collingwood's Marty Clarke comes from, and yet I'll forget to buy some milk on the way home despite her having asked me on the phone only 10 minutes earlier. I can't say it's because I love football, or else I'll be setting myself to hear "Does that mean you don't love me ?"
I do love her, but if she asked whether I loved her more than football, I couldn't swear I wouldn't pause for too long before answering, and I reckon a lot of blokes reading this might be the same.
It's embarrassing, sure, but it's not something I'm ashamed of.
I've liked people who I've just met, more immediately because they've announced early in the conversation that they support the same team as me. I've taken longer to like people when they've told me they barrack for say, Collingwood. Or Adelaide. Or Freo.
I can't help it, and it's childish, but I don't think I'm alone. In fact I know I'm not, because it's impossible to avoid overhearing people talk about footy, and this bias based on which tribe you choose to belong to is there to see.
I didn't realise how much we talked footy until I spent a few years in London, where they don't even know it exists. And those who do know of the AFL, view it on the same level as the WWF or monster truck racing. They see it as a novelty/comedy sport. Something only those crazy, brutal ignorant Aussies could be interested in.
We're willing and able to embrace 'English' football, and yet they aren't smart enough to even acknowledge ours. Well, believe me, it's their loss.
As a mad sports fan, I've enjoyed the thrill of watching Ashes Tests at Lords, I've seen Beckham score for England at Wembley, baseball at Yankee Stadium, ice hockey in Canada; I've even seen jai alai in Miami and reluctantly, bullfighting in Spain.
I took them all seriously and I took pleasure one way or another from each experience. But none of them can compete with seeing a Russell Robertson or a Gary Ablett Sr screamer, or the sheer scorching pace of Chris Judd and Aaron Davey, or the defensive brilliance of Bruce Doull and Matthew Scarlett.
People who aren't into AFL footy as much as I am, whether they're locals or from overseas, will never understand. And their lives are lesser for it, just as mine is better for knowing what's it's like to love this greatest game on earth.
If Australia is the lucky country, then the existence of the AFL goes a long way to explaining why.
And as long as moments like Leo Barry's mark keep adding to our game's great history, I can't see our love for footy fading for at least another 150 years.
Matthew Hardy is the author of the best-selling book Saturday Afternoon Fever, now in its third print release with Random House and has a stand-up comedy DVD on release titled I'm So Australian.
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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
