Few events in contemporary American life seem to evoke as much emotion and anticipation in the populace as does the yearly “Superbowl”. At least that’s what I hear, not what I actually experience, and I am lead to believe that by the media. To suggest that a reading of any dictionary under the word “hype” would include the word “Superbowl” might make many real sports fans angry, but it would only give evidence to the old adage that a lie doesn’t have the power to enrage like the truth does. For after watching this Sunday’s “Big Game”, I am left with the feeling that at this point the Superbowl is more about being the friggin Superbowl than actually about a really good football game.
I should note that the game itself was not an unpleasant or boring sporting event, after a fashion. There was, at least in the first half, some tension and a possibility that either team could go home with Championship rings and have unprotected gratuitous sex with fans. Add to that some bad calls, good plays, and baffling coaching decisions, and it seemed for a while that the game might be at least worthy of the moniker “fairly interesting football game”. But even that would only have been possible if the expectation that this game was the Ultimate Showdown of the Year wasn’t present. Except that it wasn’t really since most fans seem to agree that the Superbowl is now just about being the Superbowl. Well, as one of my closest friends likes to say, “What am I supposed to do with that?”
Before the contest even started though, the media tried very hard to make sure that this game was different. That this one was tense and that excitement was in the air floating around like so much cocaine in Kate Moss’s nasal cavities. Breathless announcers reminded the audience a dozen times that the teams were asked, no begged, not to start fights with each other and succumb to cannibalism on national television. Security details were shown in detail and countless references were made to the teams being this close to breaking loose at any minute and starting a riot. Why, other than for purposes of turning this lazy merry-go-round into a Rollercoaster-of-Death would the ABC announcers tell me that the teams had asked not to come through the tunnel together for fears of bloodshed? I swear at some point I heard one talking head say, “Pray for the lives that will doubtless be lost today.” Except that’s probably not true because no one in the media believes in God.
But of course nothing of the sort happened. To summarize: two teams showed up, one team was more aggressive and played more consistently, one “Half-time show” featuring the undead was presented without any saggy, middle-aged boobs, and a few mostly literate players were allowed to vocally masturbate in public over how awesome those players thought they were. Yeah, yawn.
And now comes the part where people tell me I “Just Don’t Get It”.
Apparently I am missing “The Point”. Somehow the game has become more of a cultural experience than a really interesting display of talent. Granted the idea is that the Superbowl should be the best game of the year since the two, ostensibly best teams in the country are playing one another. But in actuality the real entertainment value comes from, I assume, more nebulous factors such as watching the game with friends, taunting your friends about who will win, boring your friends with your vast knowledge of trivial sports facts, having your friends get you more beer and so on. Well if that’s the case, then I certainly “get it”. Further I understand the desire to be part of something more communal, more catholic in the lower-c meaning of the word. After all who wouldn’t want to be able to respond knowingly, when a stranger asked about the game, “Yeah, I saw that play, and I still don’t understand why the coach didn’t call a time-out when the guy’s bowel spilled over the line of scrimmage…” Sure, we all want that.
But I posit that it wasn’t always the case and perhaps something more pernicious and deeply cultural is going on. Perhaps this desire to have any kind of connection with the rest of the country is more an indication that many Americans feel they no longer have anything in common with other Americans. Certainly no national holiday doesn’t pass without someone whining about being excluded or oppressed, and the daily news is exclusively concerned with showing the results of arguments between people who could not get along and had few common interests (i.e. a murderer, his victim, and the cops). So most people need a break; something everyone can be involved in; something that is uncontroversial enough to limit the death toll and spark pleasant conversations around the Proverbial water-cooler.
I think the evidence for this isolation is the increasing representation of women in the national audience. Recent statistics put female viewership of the game at an all-time high of half of all viewers. Huh? Since only a small fraction of that number of woman watch regular season football regularly, obviously it isn’t just a love of the game that fixes them in front of the television alongside the slobbering, raving sports nut they married. Apparently women became wiser and decided that sure, it would be nice to have one thing a year they could talk over with the father of their children.
On a related note I would add that advertisers are hip to this phenomenon from both ends: there are now Superbowl adds aimed at women (boring and touchy-feely women’s shelter stuff) and the traditional adds aimed towards men that show good old-fashioned violence, sex, beer, and humor. No one can figure out why they dug up the moldering remains of Mic Jagger to perform and I must say I think we should leave the deceased in peace.
Which leads us to the point: Americans, alienated and desperate, seek a socialist paradise wherein everyone has seen the Superbowl. The game itself no longer matters so much as the act of participating in the game, even tangentially (evidence: a hotdog from the stadium sold on Ebay for $10,000). Even I, long disinterested in football, was forced at gunpoint to write something about the friggin Superbowl. But I think something important has been lost when the foundation of a tradition has been eroded to the point that it is inconsequential to that tradition. Christmas is now about “holiday spirit” and not about Jesus; a college education is more about having that “piece of paper” than actually being able to think; marriage is more about convenience than a commitment to God and family. And like Paris Hilton’s sexual partners, the list of failed traditions grows each year. Now the Superbowl is one of the most obvious examples of that loss of solid principles (the best teams playing the best game of the year) in favor of fuzzy, little understood goals (feeling good because people you didn’t know also watched the game at the same time you did).
Obviously most people would just assume I “think too much” or I am “too serious” or I “need to get out and get laid”. Most of that is true but irrelevant and just mean. A more damning argument against me would be that I am, in true hippie fashion, making Rousseau’s argument for “authenticity” and that I am railing against the Bourgeois concept of the mass-market Superbowl. In one sense I am but with very important differences. We would both agree that the Superbowl should remain about being the best, playing the best, being the most exciting. Reality matters, hype doesn’t. But where Rousseau would suggest that only the people directly involved in the game could appreciate it, I believe that everyone, even the mass market, should be able to appreciate it but only if it is truly the most super of bowls. Neither of us is happy with the spectacle as it has become today… except maybe the part with the cheerleaders.
But have I fallen into the same trap? If I don’t include a reason why this authenticity is important, then yes, this article is simply about writing an article about the Superbowl. So instead I will suggest that foundational values are important in anything because the superficial is easily discarded. If the Superbowl is not about the best game of the year, then why pretend it matters at all and afford it more coverage and audience than any other game? Why not change the rules to make it more exciting, add extra players, allow more abusive contact, include starving lions? Like a marriage that is based on expedience being easy to dissolve with divorce when circumstances change, a Superbowl based on hype is not “super”; it’s just another game. At some point people will realize the game is trivial and conclude that they watch because the commercials are funny. And once the commercials aren’t funny, who will watch then?
I think the Superbowl will continue on with increasing popularity for a long time to come regardless. But popular consent does not imply a general good: Chinese citizens consent to communism but also drown thousands of baby girls each year. Yet it is a tide and tides are powerful until they are not, even to a doubter like myself. Despite all of the above and my fervent disappointment that flash continues to win over substance, one thing remains certain: I’ll watch next year’s game too.
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