Super Buzzkill

Today is the Super Bowl.  Perhaps the last one for 2 or more years.  Maybe my last in New York.   Possibly the last one ever (hey, you never know).

I think I'm staring to feel about the Super Bowl the way Luther felt about the Church.  Really this applies to all of sports in general, but I think the Super Bowl is the best, all-encompassing example of this phenomenon.   I'm not the first to say it, but the game has become weighed down with a double thick layer of pomp and crass commercialism.  I appreciate some of this, since this is a big cultural event.  Its only natural that we should try to impart onto in a certain gravity greater than that of a mere football game, that we should try to "make sacred" this seemingly ordinary yet clearly important event.  Its a holiday, a feast, a celebration, and one which I love and embrace with gusto.

Sadly, every year our celebration gets weighed down a little bit more with the superfluous and distracting trappings of our age.  Take this example:  According to TV guide, the Super Bowl is slotted for 4 hours.  The official pregame show on Fox is slotted for... 4 hours.  And the only reason they even out is that 30 minutes of pregame activity prior to kickoff has been added to the game broadcast in the listings.  If additional comment is necessary then you probably don't see the problem.

Most of this damage was done long ago.  The Simpsons had jokes about this 20 years ago (which I can remember watching for the first time.  Damn, I'm old).  But even now there are incremental incursions into the game itself.  More commercial time, more tie ins, more pregame shows, more hype.  More of everything, except the thing I love: the actual game.   That's set in stone.  60 minutes, 100 yards, winner take all.

I'm here for the game.  I can appreciate some of the commercials and such, to a point, since many are creative, but even that has become weighed down by committee thinking and lowest common denominator crassness.  But most of the rest can go and I would be happier for it.  And that goes for coverage of all sports nowadays. 

There is a good article in The Awl this week about this, in which the writer is privileged to see long lost footage of Super Bowl I and compares the experience to the modern sporting event.  Definitely worth a read and some reflection, even if the post itself is a bit overwritten and tries a bit too hard to be intellectual.  Its only football, after all.

I don't know what the answer is, or even if there is an answer.  I have no illusions about nailing some pamphlet of theses to the doors of ESPN and starting a sporting reformation.  Nor would I give up the game I love, despite its many flaws.  Perhaps my sustaining hope should be that the game itself has reached a saturation point, and that there just aren't any more empty boughs on the tree on which to hang ornamentation.

More than anything, though, I hope its a good game, and I hope its not our last.