At approximately 6:25 PM EST on Sunday in Miami, an expensively
clad foot will meet a prolate spheroid sending it skyward; kicking
off the nation’s most-celebrated single day of sport. Across the
country, folks will gather for their annual feast of football’s
finest but will be forced also to endure side dishes of poor
punditry, bathroom humor, and really bad music.
Baseball, of course, is America’s pastime, but when the game’s
great pastures are covered by winter frost, those who do not hunker
down to the hot-stove to warm themselves with dreams of horsehide
glory, move on to pigskin pursuits. And although MLB seems
determined to have it otherwise, the World Series retains a sort of
stately aura which the NFL’s title game surely lacks.
Let me admit right off that, as a lifelong Chicago Bears fan, I
have paid more than casual attention to things post-season this
year. Since my rooting interest in the Sunday games is typically
over by Halloween, I generally cringe when Super Bowl Sunday comes
along. Whereas I will always watch the Fall Classic closely no
matter who is in it, February football leaves me cold.
The reasons for this disdain of the Super Bowl? Let me name just
a few. Firstly, there’s the pompous way the Bowls are titled.
Except for those of us who are crossword puzzlers or old movie fans
who love to watch the credits roll, nobody can actually decipher
the numbering system. Seriously, who but the most hardened of fans
can quickly recall — without counting backwards — who won, say,
Super Bowl XXXIV? (It was the Rams, by a score of XXIII to XVI).
Roman Numerals should be reserved for popes, not football
games.
Then there’s the stupidly that the game is always played at warm
weather or domed-stadium sites. It makes little sense that teams
should expend so much energy in pursuing “home-field advantage”
when it is rendered meaningless in the ultimate contest. Can anyone
who watched the NFC title game last week — with the whirling snow,
visible breath trails and chunks of sod embedded everywhere — not
agree that this is the way football is supposed to be played?
And what about the interminable halftime “entertainment”? For
the first twenty or so years, we actually had football-type and
family-friendly fare at intermission; college marching bands with a
dash of Americana like Up With People, or the occasional appearance
of Jazz artists when the game was held in New Orleans. That is,
until SB XXV and the appearance of the unctuous New Kids on the
Block; it’s been all downhill since then.
Yet the NFL, that paradigm of virtue which courts the most
vulgar of advertisements for its weekly games, actually banned MTV,
who produced the infamous wardrobe malfunction debacle, from future
halftime shows. A welcome start to be sure, but the thing is, I
don’t know anyone who actually saw the incident occur live; so
insipidly tiresome have the shows become.
Equally annoying will be the incessant chatter of the TV
analysts; always the same no matter their network affiliation. When
a plodding, usually white, tight-end or flanker makes a catch, he
will be referred to redundantly as a “possession-type receiver.” Or
similarly, we will learn that a punter is lining up to kick from
“deep in his own endzone,” or that a team is pinned down on their
“own” five yard line; as opposed to the other team’s, I
suppose.
And in the ultimate Claude Rains moment, the League has declared
that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is barred from
airing tourist ads for fear that the game might be associated with
gambling. I kid you not. So exasperating are the gales of
hypocrisy and hype, that one is tempted to forgo the game
altogether.
But this fan will shelve all of the hoopla and hyperbole in
order to actually focus on the game this year. So far, most of the
talk has centered on quarterbacks. Has Peyton Manning really gotten
the monkey off his back just by making it to the big game? Most
sports pundits seem to think so, but I’m not so sure. Just ask Jim
Kelly or Fran Tarkenton.
Is Rex Grossman the worst Supe QB ever? Many think so but they
are not Bears fans, who know this is irrelevant. Let’s face it. The
Bears have not had a great quarterback since the middle of the last
century. How many teams can claim a career passing record that has been unsurpassed for 56
years? And what Bears fan can forget the immortal Bobby Douglass (the second “s” is for “sack”);
the left-handed, blonde savior out of Kansas, whose 34-year-old
single season rushing record was only eclipsed in 2006 by Michael
Vick, who ran because he wanted to and not because he had to?
No, in spite of apoplexy Rexy, the Bears will be triumphant
because of defense and special teams. But should the redoubtable
Rex come to play the way only he knows he can, it is possible that
we will win in a rout. And since there’s a rumor that it’s still
possible to do so, bet on it.
