Superbowl Day! Oh no!
Oh geezers and games, balls and bands, distraction, circuses, hopes, fears, downs, drives, and dire futures.
I'm going to break several of my own rules, to wit 1. To never to discuss sports or 2. politics) in the rant/Jeremiad/dispairing plea that follows. There are several good reasons you should ignore this essay and perhaps even unsubscribe if you're a fan of the Superbowl. One reason is that I’m old, old as in dinosaur old, hated Boomer old, living fossil old, another reason is that I'm not hip, am out of touch, very uncool. I can hardly dance, don't get high, don't know hip hop from hopscotch, until recently still used a flip phone, and never heard of Usher until my wife said she had gotten a CD of him fifteen years ago! I still think Annie Lennox and the Eurhythmics, Huey Lewis and the News, Hall and Oates, are the best bands since the Beatles, the Stones, the Dave Clark Five and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Much less Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, ? and the Mysterians (96 Tears) Vanilla Fudge, much less the real classics like Dick and Dee Dee (The Mountain’s High), the Platters, the Del-vikings, the Chantels, the Coasters, Little Anthony and the Imperials! Yes, living in the past am I. So here's a voice from that past.
I have reluctantly grown to cordially dislike the Superbowl and all its works. Get thee behind me Superbowl, thou tempter to inanity! You are a fallen angel from the days you dwelt in the heaven of your ancestor, Superbowl I with the genius Stram against the bullying Lombardi, unheralded Dawson versus all-american hero Starr, legendary players like Buck Buchanan and Elijah Pitts. A Game for the ages! The half time was just a bunch of marching bands and Al “Honey in the Horn” Hirt. A simpler day and one that well suited this old guy, younger then.
What has become of the Superbowl? It has morphed into something far more massive. It has become a sprawling megapalooza, a reliably gawdy, sometimes tawdry spectacle, a woeful reminder to the world of what American popular culture has come to, an ambassador of soulless emptiness, signifying nothing- all sound and fury. Shakespeare could have written a tragi-comedy on it.
Maybe I'm being a bit extreme here, and undeservedly harsh-my prose a bit overblown? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Suffice it to say I've left the ranks of Superbowl fanhood. Repugnance finally outmatched reverence.
The Superbowl has grown rapidly into a figurative cancer in a culture grown devoted to entertainment and empty spectacle, an effluvia from the deep cisterns, the darker side of the national character. Aren't we better than this? What is America here in the world for, to be a vendor of the vapid, a barker of the banal, a purveyor of the pretentious, to be the useless bottom of the cultural aquarium? What must others of the international community think of our spiritual plummeting- the Superbowl is held, after all, on Sunday, a day formerly devoted to worship. What must some of us think? Am I being too extreme here? Perhaps I am. Let me catch my breath.
*****
It is a tale of a dual descent and simultaneous inflation. The descent is well documented. Just when the viewer thinks it can't get worse, the very next year it gets worse. From wardrobe mishaps to obscenities it gets worse. The inflation is in the enormous metastatic growth of this tumor in our nation’s operations. What comes next? An official Superbowl Day held the Monday after Superbowl Sunday, with all federal offices closed? Perhaps flags will be flown at half-mast when Superbowl heroes pass away? Maybe the Treasury mint will start coining Superbowl quarters, one for each Superbowl with game MVPs on the Washington side and team heraldry of that year’s matchup on the reverse. Maybe a federal district will be created, a city like Las Vegas devoted to a single economy and function, with a gargantuan stadium ringed by parking lots, satellite sports theme parks and myriad vendors, mega-hotels with their in-house sports betting rooms and perhaps game-viewing auditoriums for those visitors unfortunate enough not to procure tickets. In the rest of the year the district would still attract hordes as the proven initial success would drive all the commercial operations in the district to quickly shift to focus on championship after championship: March madness, NBA, MLB. Attractions year around!
This is all gross hyperbole I’m aware, but there's more than a grain of truth here as well. It's safe to say that we are a somewhat schizoid country both aspiring to cure the world's ills while simultaneously desiring to be distracted from facing those same ills by dismal spectacles, the bread and circuses of our era. It’s also safe to say that we will in all likelihood continue to be so divided. It may even get worse as powerful commercial and political interests profit from the tumor's growth- there's gold in them thar thrills, shekels in the spectacles, money to be made, and importantly, votes to be gained from opening yet another battlefront in the seemingly endless culture wars. A race to the bottom alas. That's the true game in this land, the game where the apathetic and the felt powerless individuals are made the kickball of the powerful to sequester their earnings and gain their votes. Twas ever thus but it really is getting worse as we sail into a threatening future with more uncertainty, anxiety and more desire to take the opioids of entertainment.
I could write more and at great length on this topic. I might even land on a talk show promoting my possible book and even donate the proceeds to worthy charities.
But none of these things will come to pass as it's Sunday and I must, total hypocrite that I am, put down my pen to watch the pre-game show. Yes, watch with slack-jawed fascination a pre-game show that started a month ago and is played by those powerful interests who are the real pros.
Yes it's game day. The game must and will go on and the stadium lights never turned off.
I'm glad I'm leaving soon but will I be able to? After all, the law hasn't made attending compulsory yet, the stadium gates still allow egress. We can still turn back as a society can't we?
“Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man
"We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave.”
The Eagles, Hotel California
Well-said Michael. Strange as it may seem being a Northern neighbour, I used to be an avid NFL fan during the 1990s. The Superbowl was, to me back then, practically a cultural-religious event.
Funny enough, it was an unplanned bout with poverty in the days before home internet that broke the habit. Cable TV being a luxury I refused to pay for in the rooming house I stayed in. That year I drifted further away from the pull of the Superbowl, NFL, MLB, and generally sports in general. By 2003, I had landed in South Korea and the habit (spell?) had long been broken.
I like your points about attractions year-round. Perhaps the frequency and absurdity of sports hype shows a level of 'darkness before the dawn' or like the bartenders yelling 'last call!' the loudest just prior to turning the lights on and telling everyone to go home.
The Chantals!! Little Anthony and the Imperials! Oh! Youth. I love your posts when you rant and exhume all these memories of people and music and Life Before it got really crazy like it is now. It wasn't this crazy was it? The crazier it gets out there the bigger the circus of distraction! But I am sitting here on the watching the sun turn the sky the best best pink/purple/orange and holding onto the beauty of THAT which doesn't cost a penny. Hope you are well.