"The game's gone mad," says Richard Keys.

"I know. Women just don't understand the offside rule."

"Course they don't, Andy."

"Napoleon."

"Napoleon, sorry."

"It's to do with wombs, probably."

"The offside rule?"

"No, not understanding it."

"Thank God for that."

"A female linesman – it's lunacy. But nobody seems to realise, Rich- I mean, Napoleon."

"Apart from us, mon empereur. It's madness."

"OK, we're on air in 30 seconds. Are you going to take the hat off?"

"The general's hat? Don't see why."

"I won't either then. Why should I? It's PC gone mad. Twenty seconds."

"Have you ever met one who understood it?"

"No, they just wave the flag at random, like a cheerleader. Ten seconds."

"I think I will take the hat off, actually."

"Me too."

Let's leave aside the avalanche of subsequent revelations and go back to the initial leaked recording, because nothing more clearly reveals the bizarre mental world that football commentators Andy Gray and Richard Keys have been inhabiting. They're Napoleon and the rest of us are too insane to realise. They knew they had to keep this knowledge a secret or the lunatics would turn on them and so it has proved.

A few apologists defended their first remarks as merely humorous. Former England women's cricket captain Rachael Heyhoe Flint said: "These were tongue-in-cheek comments and we are blowing something enormously out of proportion here." But when you listen to that recording, it's not tongue in cheek at all. Their criticisms of female assistant referee Sian Massey are marked, as Gabby Logan wrote in the Times, with a "total lack of laughter".

I find that fascinating. These men weren't making sexist jokes or taking the piss. They seem genuinely to believe that women can't understand the offside rule. Not just women who don't like football or only watch the occasional match; not just scatter-brained sculptresses or isolated Pacific island tribeswomen; not just Katie Price or the Queen; but women who have worked their entire careers to get a job in football, been fully trained as referees and officiated in hundreds of matches. They think even those women can't understand the offside rule.

It seems reasonable to conclude that these broadcasters are implying that women are, at the very least, slightly less intelligent than men. But possibly only slightly: maybe they reckon that the offside rule is the most complex and difficult concept known to, well, man. They may think women can do anything else men can do – right up to rocket science, brain surgery and transubstantiation – but that female intelligence cuts off just before that most elusive and nuanced of human ideas, the offside rule. If that's the case, Keys and Gray are a bit sexist, but their main mental health problem is believing a slightly tricky rule from an incredibly straightforward game – a notion on the level of buying hotels in Monopoly – is like existentialism, string theory, the double helix, long division and backing-up-Nokia-phone-contacts-on-an-Apple-computer all rolled into one.

But it may be that they've got a better sense of proportion about the trickiness of offside, yet still consider it to be beyond any woman's intellectual grasp. If that's the case, they must spend most of their lives looking around in horrified bewilderment. They think women are imbeciles and yet there women are, walking around, wearing clothes, holding down jobs, being allowed to vote – driving around in cars, for God's sake! Gray and Keys must be terrified.

Could chimps be taught the offside rule? Or dolphins? That octopus seemed to know a lot about football. How basic an organism do Andy and Richard consider the female of their species to be? And why has Andy had sex with so many of them? Sarah Palin must be even more horrifying to them than she is to the rest of us: they're not worried that, if she became president, she'd destroy the world out of evil, inflexible rightwing rage, but just because the red button looked like a Smartie.

Is that why they've forged careers in football, the last bastion of male dominance? The moron women – the shaggable zombies, the lipstick-wearing Borg – hadn't yet broken into that citadel. It was safe. But now, with the sight of a woman on the touchline, randomly waving a flag or not waving a flag (and occasionally doing it at the right time by pure luck, the jammy bitch), they know that the Matrix's machines have entered Zion.

These men have so completely misapprehended the nature of humanity that they should be pitied. Poor, stupid Richard Keys – he probably doesn't even understand how funny it is that he said: "Did you hear charming Karren Brady this morning complaining about sexism? Yeah, do me a favour, love." But it's hard to pity people who have built massively successful careers in spite of mirthless arrogance, a towering sense of entitlement and disdain for a world they're convinced has got everything wrong. So I don't.

And these guys aren't alone. Football is full of Napoleons. Croatian FA president Vlatko Markovic is a good example. Last year, he said: "While I'm a president of the Croatian Football Federation, there will be no homosexuals playing in the national team", adding: "Luckily, only normal people play football." Yeah, normal people like Paul Gascoigne, Wayne Rooney, Gordon Ramsay, George Best and Craig Bellamy. What normal people.

It's certainly true that very few professional footballers admit to the "abnormality" of being gay. Maybe it's fancying men that messes with the brain's offside-understanding lobe? But surely that would make lesbian refs OK?

The worst thing about the footballing Napoleon complex is that it's so possessive of a game that shouldn't, and ultimately can't, be possessed. The human urge to kick a ball around and attempt to get it into a goal, and the urge to watch other people doing that, are innocent and harmless pleasures. How come they're so often marred by tedious bastards – from Andy Gray to Roman Abramovich to Sepp Blatter – trying to own the fun? They want to be able to take their balls away if we don't play with them in the way they like. When they can't, they start whining.

So, yes, Andy and Richard, the game's gone mad. Enjoy St Helena. I hope it's St Helena, not Elba.