This year while watching the Super Bowl I remembered a day years ago, when I still worked at a bar. The owner had purchased an advertorial in a publication that had a circulation comprised solely of other bars. The reporter/marketing associate asked him: (paraphrased) what kind of place is this? The owner proceeded to list every subgenre of drinking establishment in his vocabulary. The venue was an Irish pub/lounge/martini bar/dance club with restaurant quality food. The owner wanted desperately to appeal to everyone, much the same as the Super Bowl planning committee.
Currently, the big game is about bringing the best of the AFC and NFC to play against a backdrop of big-budget beer and insurance commercials, conglomerates’ attempt at irony, the launch of the summer movie advertising campaigns, and a halftime show so meticulously crafted it alienates most of the audience.
If you enjoy any one thing more than the other you cannot help but be distracted. I wanted to watch a Super Bowl played with two great defenses and two amazing quarterbacks. Instead I spent the first half waiting for the first Captain America trailer. I could not quite make what was going on, but apparently Chris Evans took steroids and fought the entirety of World War II in 30 seconds, in split second clips to boot. Oh, and Big Ben kept the game from becoming irrelevant by the end of the second quarter.
Then the halftime show commenced. I think am perpetually shocked that somehow the NFL manages to produce the worst 10 minutes of music television every year, but their track record could not be worse. Just take a look at Wikipedia’s list of Super Bowl halftime programs. Of late, the league has tried to distance itself from the first half of the new century and its many unnatural MTV disasters and began keying in on the oldies station.
Now hold on, you may protest. Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and The Who are classic rock, not oldies. Well, sir (or madam) you are old, as in older than 35. This year the corporate reincarnate of you tried to find a fresh young act and came upon the Black Eyed Peas. Hysterically, the Black Eyed Peas sang a line from “Boom Boom Pow,” one which goes:
“I’m so 3008, You so 2000 and late”
Now anyone under 30 realizes the line might as well as read:
“I’m so 2008, You so 2000 and late.”
The Black Eyed Peas recorded “Boom Boom Pow” in 2008 (the last year this group mattered) and all the young-ins knows it, so the extra millennium on the first verse does not extend the relevancy of the song.
No wonder every game seems anticlimactic until the fourth quarter. The pure volume of background buzz does not dissipate until the last 15 minutes of football – field time, not real time. The Steelers lost a game that I can only consider great in retrospect. I wish I had known BBC broadcast the game without commercials. Instead, the inevitable clash of commerce and sports produced an underwhelming experience.
Thankfully, I only have to wait a month until I can enjoy a sporting event whose play still overshadows its sponsors. Yes, now I can begin watching college basketball and know that if I cannot get March Madness tickets, then I can at least enjoy hours of unpaid athletes playing their hearts out and securing a job selling insurance, cars, IT consultations, or whatever the alma mater booster network has available. I kid, I sincerely profess that I am looking forward to watching the men’s college basketball tournament – and the chance to recoup my losses from the Super Bowl squares with an amazing bracket.