Today is Super Bowl Sunday. If any day approaches something of a civic religious holiday, it is this one. Surely no other event in this country is so relentlessly hyped, involves so much money and stirs up so much ersatz emotion. Other than Christmas, I mean.
I am not a big NFL person and I usually don’t much give a rip about the outcome of the Super Bowl. I’m far more interested in college ball despite its being the completely corrupt enterprise that it is. As far as the pros go, I am far more likely to pay attention to the NBA finals or to the World Series than the Super Bowl. I might be more interested if the Saints were to ever make it to The Big Game but that is only because such an occurrence would also be one of the signs of the End Times.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy sports as much as the next guy. I just don’t get that emotionally involved in it. I would refer to myself as what the Europeans would call “a sportsman.” I usually have some kind of ball game on whenever I am at home, even if I am not watching it. The sounds and the cadences of sports are familiar and comforting to me. I listen to ESPN Radio in the car. I enjoy attending ballgames from intercollegiate to tee ball. There’s not much of anything that I enjoy better than playing golf with my friends. Even on a day that is as freezing cold as is this one.
But even though I consider myself to a knowledgeable sports fan, one who cares about sports and what they mean to the culture, for the life of me I do not understand how adults can live and die over the outcome of the games. I don’t know why people paint their faces and bodies in the colors of their teams. I don’t understand why people obsess over the recruitment of children by our colleges and universities. I am always shocked when I hear guys talk about the amount of money that they have wagered on events like the Super Bowl.
As I have written in the past, regardless of how much the promoters of these events want the fans to be “a part of the action” there is a line between what is real and what is not real. And I fear that the fools that leave the stands to run out on the field of play, the same sad men that call “Drive Time Sports” over and over again, and the guys that frequent the “Fire-insert coach’s name here-.com” websites have forgotten that.
I’m kind of the same mind as my buddy Oley who once said of the Super Bowl, “The goddamn thing is gonna be on, so we might as well watch.” It’s an excuse to make some cheese dip, put some burgers on the grill, have a few drinks and to marvel at the fact that Keith Richards is somehow still alive. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe it will even be a good game.
But it is not real. Just like Christmas.
1 comment:
There are 2 common urban myths about the trunk feature on your car:
#1 -- The opener for the trunk on the inside of the car is supposed to help prevent someone from grabbing a woman's purse while she's walking towards the car blinded from packages or a full car, throwing the purse on the ground & getting the keys and then stuffing her into the trunk. The opener on the inside adds one more bothersome step to the assailant's operation. The kidnapper has to get inside the car first to open the trunk and then shove her inside it. This gives her a chance to kick him in the balls and use the mace spray thingy that falls out of her purse on the concrete when he demands the keys. As the story goes, the option was invented by a female engineer at GM in the 1980's who also co-invented the portable spray macer thingy. A devoted career woman, she passed away without heirs and left the invention in her will to GM and the next year GM came out with the feature.
#2 The inside the car trunk opener was invented so that the person who wants to stay in the car and listen to ESPN on the radio while the woman shops is not bothered with having to carry her bags or empty the cart upon her return. He can simply use the hand without a beer in it to push a button and never miss a call. As the story goes, this was invented by a male redneck line worker who immigrated to Detroit during the 1960's and became chairman of the board and retired handsomely on the patent rights.
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