January 30, 2004
Hate The Super Bowl?
Mike Steinberg of the Financial Times hates the Super Bowl:
I have an admission to make: I hate the Super Bowl. Yes, I am American; yes, I cover American sports for this newspaper; and yes, I love my mother and enjoy apple pie. However, were I not obligated professionally to tune in, I would sooner spend the day organising my wife's winter wardrobe than wasting even a minute on the Super Bowl - the game is that painful to watch.
When the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers take the field on Sunday in Houston, I will assume my place on the couch with roughly the same enthusiasm I bring to the dentist's chair.
The game itself is not the main problem: the problem is the many cloying layers of icing that surround it. There is the six-hour pre-game show. The pre-game concert and the half-time concert (this year's headliners: Janet Jackson, Beyoncé, Willie Nelson, and P. Diddy). The pre-game flyover by fighter jets. The avalanche of advertisements - scores of them, all specially made for Super Bowl Sunday, each new one more grating than the last. And all this preceded by two weeks of unrelenting hype. What started out as a football game has morphed into the crudest collision of Hollywood, capitalism and jingoism imaginable.
Ah, yes, another American bashing the nation of his birth for the benefit of a foreign audience. How banal.
While this blog primarily covers ice hockey, Captain Off Wing is a confirmed fan of the Super Bowl. Whether Steinberg likes it or not, the Super Bowl is America's real national holiday. Everything that he can't stand about the game, I absolutely love. The commercials, the unabashed patriotism, and a half time show that has absolutely nothing to do with the game -- I love it all.
Every football season, I make a point of going to the Baltimore Ravens' home opener. And after sitting through the fireworks, the flyover by a wing of A-10 Warthogs, an Edgar Allen Poe-inspired video, and the introductory antics of Ray Lewis, I turn to my friend who I split my season tickets with and say -- as Michael Buffer bellows, "Let's get ready to ruummmbble!" -- "Is this the greatest nation on earth, or what?" He never fails to smile wide and give me an emphatic nod.
Besides, if you don't want to watch the game, there are always other options.
POSTSCRIPT: Here's a Super Bowl advertising preview. For more, head over to superbowl-ads.com. ESPN.com rates the top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time. Primary assist to JJ Daley.
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