Superbowl Sunday…the pinnacle of American consumerism. Most people probably think that is the Christmas holiday season, which now begins shortly after Halloween. Sad to say, as someone who only watches football one time per year, and then only to watch the show within the show (aka: the commercials) I can only conclude that what Superbowl Sunday represents is everything that is just slightly off about American culture.
First of all, let’s get this out in the open, I think football players are a bunch of wimps. How can you think anything else about a bunch of guys who are payed millions upon millions of dollars per year to work for 3 hours a week?
Yes, yes, I know, it’s a contact sport. So what. You want a contact sport, watch a hockey game (and for the record, no, I’m not a hockey fan). Hockey players take just as much of a beating as the average football player and most starting line-ups play at least three times a week, and their season is about twice as long as the professional football season.
Look at baseball players. No, baseball is not a contact sport; this much is true. However, the baseball season is not only almost a quarter longer in calendar time but it is also about three times as long in terms of the number of games played (and yes, I am a life-long baseball fanatic). Baseball players, like hockey players, work every two to three days, multiple days in a row.
Basketball…fast becoming a contact sport (otherwise, while all the uproar over Magic Johnson’s HIV status?). These guys run, far more than football players and about as much as hockey players, and they too play every two to three days.
So why then do we deify a bunch of meat-head wimps? It’s simple…bread and circuses.
Superbowl Sunday is about excess. It’s about the two “toughest” teams in the “world championship” (would now be a good time to mention that the world includes more countries than the U.S.?) playing out the fantasies of a very average 13 year-old boy. The game is about being tough; the commercials are about being amused, and being sexually aroused (like the commercial for the pro-bowl and the hockey all-star game with the two girls in the bikini’s running was about anything else?).
More than that, though, Superbowl Sunday is about selling America its view of itself. That we’re rugged individualists who know how to be tough and show everyone a good time. But if someone is having to sell us our identity, what kind of identity is it really? How can you claim to be an individual if all your ideas are manufactured in ad agencies somewhere?
And can someone please tell me just how it takes 95 minutes to play 24 minutes of football?
Next year, I’m going to the movies.