Column: It was a super experience

Talk about it

The Super Bowl took place last Sunday. You probably knew that. It’s been discussed.

If you didn’t know, maybe you could use some catching up. Let’s start at the beginning.

The Super Bowl is a football game. It’s played once a year to determine which football team is the best football team in the United States and, pretty much by default, the world. At least until those Canadian football get their act together.

(Side note: I originally wrote the previous sentence with NFL Europe in place of Canadian football, but a quick Google search revealed that NFL Europe hasn’t been a real thing for more than four years. Apparently Europeans were OK with the version of football they already had, a game many Americans call soccer and others call, “That stupid no-hands game ESPN insists on showing every four years.” Also, apparently I pay even less attention to international football than I pay to American football.)

The winners of the Super Bowl, in this case the New York Giants, get to refer to themselves as world champions until this time next year, even after half of their players agree to play with other teams for more money.

Many experts will tell you Sunday’s game was excellent. They mean it was close, which it certainly was. What they do not mean is that in one of the biggest sporting events of their lives grown men failed on three separate occasions to accurately count to 11. Somebody needs to get those guys an abacus.

The Super Bowl is not just about the football game, of course. It’s also about the advertising, which famously costs as much to buy each year as many small islands. Thirty seconds of advertising time on this year’s broadcast cost an average of $3.5 million, or roughly one fifth what the Minnesota Timberwolves have agreed to pay basketball star and noted face stomper Kevin Love each year.

Many people will tell you they only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. A nearly identical number of people will tell you after the Super Bowl is over that they were disappointed by those commercials. They do this every year, which suggests either that human beings have short memories or that people will convince themselves of just about anything if it allows them to sit around all day while eating lots of food and drinking lots of beer.

This year’s ads featured the usual assortment of women in bikinis, cute animals and talking babies. They also featured Clint Eastwood getting all bossy and telling us to get off our butts and make our country better, which seems counterproductive considering how much most of the people watching had been eating and drinking by that point. A more appropriate message might have been, “Come on, America. At least button your pants!”

Finally, the Super Bowl is about the halftime show. This year that show featured alarmingly-muscled pop star Madonna strolling around on a giant stage and moving her mouth while someone played a remixed greatest hits CD they dug out of their collection. She was joined on stage by younger performers who shared with the star, if nothing else, a tendency to perform in their underpants.

Now, it’s all over, and we as a country have just a few weeks to prepare for our next major sports obsession, the NCAA basketball tournament. It won’t be easy, but I know we can do it.

Button your pants, America!

Tags: opinion, farmington, commentaries