I was not "ready to rumble"

So, I nearly got into a fight the other night. Well, a verbal fight anyway. I was at a party this past weekend. We were having a good time, eating food and dancing to silly music. As the night wore on, we all decided to give up dancing for some relaxing conversation.

I was sitting next to a guy I had never met before. He worked for a fantasy sports website, designing mailers for fantasy football. I asked him if he was a bookie, and he said no. Hey, whatever pays the bills, right? So, we began a pleasent conversation about football.

If you don't already know, I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I know football. I could tell that he was surprised to see a girl hold her own in a football conversation. But, we didn't have any problems at first.

I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but we began to chat about how football is better than professional basketball these days, because it hasen't yet been totally corrupted by the "thuggary" that is so prevelant in the NBA. (I swear, sometimes I think I'm watching a music video rather than a basketball game some days.) And while the NFL defenately has its share of thugs who are only in it for themselves and the glory they can incur, there are a lot of teams who genuinly play for the team, and their combined victory. The Pack is an excellent example of this.

No sooner was this statement out of my mouth, than his eyes lit up with the fury of hell. He started on a rampage about how "Brett Favre is ruining that team and the whole game, and the Packers are a terrible team and here's why" etc. Feeling like this was not appropriate to the seemingly nice convo we were just having, I simply said that I didn't want to get into it. It was late, and I was tired, and I don't really feel I need to justify my home-town team love to some clown I just met.

To my distress, HE KEPT ON TALKING! He simply WOULD NOT STOP until he made his point. I must have said "I don't want to talk about it" five or six times to him. Literally. Finally, I just sat and stared at him until he was done. I gave him that courtesy, even though he wasn't showing me any. After a minute, he stopped and stared back at me. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: "Are you done?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "Good."
Him: "Don't you want to say anything back?"
Me: "I TOLD YOU THAT I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT."
Him: ".... Why?"
Me: sigh....

Weird right? I don't know what propelled him to begin to act like such a jackass. A friend said that he was probably intimidated that a girl knew so much about football, and needed to "assert dominance" by turning into a macho prick and trying to verbally crush me. It makes sence: He wasn't trying to change my viewpoint on the Pack, he was simply trying to tell me that he was right and I was a moron for the viewpoint he perceived I held (though I hadn't actually rendered an opinion on the Pack, all I said was that I was from Green Bay and that the pack didn't have any thug, superstars on the team). But, all he ended up doing was eliminating any respect I had for him.

I had thought that he was just passionate about football, but does that really give him the right to completely disreguard my position in our "conversation" and hijack the entire deal for himself?

I'll probably just stick with the "he's an insecure, macho prick" theory. Any thoughts?