The Super Bowl is finally here. Yea. Please pardon my underwhelming sense of enthusiasm for this year’s game. Normally I’m as much a football-crazy loon as the next guy, but I’m just not feelin’ it this year.
I know some folks who can’t wait for the game to get here. One good friend of mine is a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. My oldest nephew loves the Green Bay Packers, or at least he did during the Brett Favre years. (What’s even more impressive about that is that he remained steadfastly loyal to the hated Packers while growing up in the heart of Chicago Bears country.)
Speaking of my beloved Bears, maybe their clunker of a performance against those same Packers in the NFC Championship Game two weeks ago, which kept them out of the Super Bowl, has something to do with my malaise for this year’s game.
Still, just as the Indianapolis 500 is the one and only auto race millions of non-race fans watch each year, just as we pretend to like soccer every four years when the World Cup rolls around or we become instant experts in the intricacies of short track speed skating during the Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl is the one football game almost every American with a pulse will watch every year.
That may be because it provides even non-football fans with a good excuse to get together and have a party. Come to think of it, in this overly-wired age of the DVR, Hulu, and YouTube, the Super Bowl might be one of the last great American communal viewing experiences left, so we better treasure and celebrate it.
So, without a vested interest in the outcome, we’ll head over to a friend’s place and watch the Big Game with the rest of the world. The game will probably be underwhelming, since so few Super Bowls really are “super,” but one fringe benefit of a Super Bowl broadcast is the collection of some of the best commercials of the year.
On the other hand, one indisputable downside of the broadcast is the dreaded Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Now, the network honchos would argue that the Super Bowl Halftime show is a Major Event, a special showcase for some of the biggest, most popular, and even legendary acts in music history. With past performances from such venerable artists as Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, ZZ Top, and The Who, to name just a few, the line-up of past Super Bowl halftime performers reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of classic rock. It’s as if the person – check that, corporate board members – in charge of finding halftime performers have been working through their personal wish list of acts they’d like to meet.
It seems like a great idea on the surface, except that in reality, it’s Super Lame. The teams depart for their locker rooms all lathered up, then the roadies throw together frighteningly gaudy stages in an even more frighteningly quick time. Other roadies push the aging band members out on-stage, whereupon the legends unhook their oxygen supplies, hoist themselves out of their wheelchairs, and stagger through a barely recognizable 3 or 4-song greatest hits set while piped-in cheers add to the din, before the whole procedure packs itself away. Finally, the teams return to the field for the second half, stiff and out of their groove after the 27-hour break.
Give ME a break. I understand the Super Bowl isn’t really about football. Let’s face it; the last real games of the NFL season are the AFC and NFC Championship Games that determine the Super Bowl combatants. No, the football game in a Super Bowl serves roughly the same purpose as the hamburger patty at McDonalds: it’s just there to support the parts that really taste good, like the ketchup, mustard, pickles, and onions.
Corporate parties, private parties, TV ad campaigns, hookers, promoting the network’s next Big TV Show, and overpriced hotel suites and luxury boxes are what the Super Bowl is really all about.
Which is where the Halftime Show comes in. It’s simply one more opportunity for a big-money sponsor to climb aboard, one more ancillary event to promote in addition to the game itself.
As for me, I’ll take a good old-fashioned marching band at halftime of a football game anytime. Like outdoor stadiums above the Mason-Dixon Line and natural grass, marching bands at halftime is the way God intended football to be.
Alas, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon at the Super Bowl. So, you may as well pass the nachos. Maybe if I crunch loud enough, I won’t have to hear the Black-Eyed Peas.
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