My Sunday Feeling

I suppose that it is safe to say that I have more than a casual interest in sports. I played a lot of ball as a kid. I ran in races, played competitive tennis and am a passable golfer admittedly only on my best day.


While I follow professional football, especially the Saints, I have to admit that I am fairly agnostic about the Super Bowl. If there is a more relentlessly overhyped, over-reported and just over anything in professional sports I don't know what it is.



And so, it is perfect that the Super Bowl contest between the Steelers and the Packers will be played this year in Jerry Jones' over the top (there's that word over again) Cowboys Stadium. Where one of the teams playing will most definitely not be the underachieving Dallas Cowboys.

Which, of course, I think is great. But I digress.

The Super Bowl is the NFL's tribute to itself and to the culture of big business as much as it is about football. It is about as subtle as Ben Roethlisberger's barroom pick-up technique. Which makes big, rich, football and Republican crazy Dallas the perfect place for such a spectacle.



Except for one thing. The weather in Dallas is just awful this time of year. I mean, I get the fact that the damn thing will be played in a dome the size of Kansas. But that's not the problem. The problem is that Texas and Oklahoma are yet again socked in by the usual late January-early February ice storm. Planes aren't flying in or out. The freeway system is one big luge. Hell, five people were injured Friday, once critically, when ice slid off of Cowboy Stadium and struck them below.

And this crappy weather happens every year down there. You would think that all the corporate types that spend a gazillion dollars for all the events surrounding the game itself would have thought to consult the National Weather Service for a 5 year average for early February in the Dallas Metroplex.

But no. They didn't worry about the elements because Jerry's Stadium is domed. Which is pretty short sighted for a tight-assed quasi-military outfit like the NFL.


Turning to the game itself, I think it will be a close one. I give the slight edge to Green Bay just because they play well in domes to which their annhilating an excellent Atlanta Falcons team in the Georgia Dome attests. But I also like the Steelers. Indeed, both teams seem to be populated with pretty good guys now that Big Ben has been chastened and James Harrison is no longer running around trying to decapitate people.

And so while I am agnostic on the subject, I will watch the damn thing, just like everyone else in America and all her ships at sea. And hope for a good game so that the highlight of the broadcast is the game itself and not the commercials, many of which last year were simply downright strange.


And if you think playing the Super Bowl, hell, much less planning any large scale event in Dallas this time of year is idiotic, wait until they play the Super Bowl in New York. Yes, the same New York, fixated upon by terrorists for decades. The same New York where there are, as we speak, 10 foot snow drifts.

Hey! I got an idea!

How about Port au Prince as a future site? At least it's warm.