Record this now as the silliest thing I write for the 2017 calendar year. Will you actually spend 12 hours watching the Super Bowl coverage? And if you do, why not stare at the sun, too?
Tongue in cheek now, everyone. Here are some ‘snarks’ from my dozen PPM “besties” (such an odd term) who shared in response to this week’s column asking…would you rather watch the state tournament or the Super Bowl?
Here you go:
“You’ve got to be kidding. Yes.” (David Waller)
“It’s that or plan my funeral.” (Joe Bookwalter)
“Might as well. You never call me, anyway.” (Bob Huelsman)
“I’d like to, but there’s a tribute to James Michener’s books on that same day. I’ll probably watch the shorter of the two.” (Jay Roman)
This goes on, mostly in fun, of course. But a lot of them did make the point, like Roman, that the only thing that takes a greater commitment than watching the Super Bowl…is reading a James Michener book.
I do know why the networks make such an all-day ordeal out of the Super Bowl. But more, I don’t know why so many people just blindly plan their day around it – like staring at cleavage on the beach, I guess.
It IS too long – too much of a good thing, even if you like football. I wrote this week that the root cause of my discontent over the Super Bowl is that it’s too far from grass roots football. This, like the NFL itself, is purely about money, ads, and the prospects of more money and more ad revenue in the future.
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If you have the time, Nate Jenkins wrote an excellent column of his own this week, calling the whole Super Bowl process (as it pertains to football) as simply…un-natural. Read it if you care, or have time, but Nate really identifies what we’ve become as a naive culture willing to follow that “bright” light – any bright light.
He wrote: It all keeps getting more extravagant and more fraught with existential meaning every year — case in point, last fall, the Big Ten Network aired promo commercials for OHSAA football games with the tag line, “You live for this!”. Is that what they want us to believe or what they know we already believe? Which is the chicken, which is the egg?
That’s good writing, like Dickie Dunn would have written in the old hockey movie, Slapshot.
But after 51 years we’ve been duped by the NFL, the networks, the pundants, and the advertisers…to believe that we actually do live for this. You, maybe, but not everyone.
Case in point, as Nate would write it – I’ll still drink Budweiser even if there were no ads, or no game. I’ll still enjoy high school football better than the Bengals or the Browns. And I’m not going to waste 12 hours on the Super Bowl. What I’ll watch is the replay of it, sans commercials. It takes an hour!
So Joe Bookwalter (who actually could plan his funeral, he’s 81 years old), the only man more cynical than me, writes, “So what will you watch? I’m interested.”
Here’s a thought. I think I’ll spend the day with my daughter and her husband in Columbus, catching up with “the Doodler”, their French Bulldog. He just had spinal surgery.
Then, Sunday night’s a great night for the Direct Channel 278, Alaskan Frontier has great photography and this week they’re bringing the cattle back to the homestead from the summer range. BTW, there’s replay of the PGA tour event on tape – even more great photography.
Every once in a while you flip over to see what the score of the game is because it is a matter of future record. God forbid I do it during halftime, though. I’d rather go to nuclear war than see Lady Gaga, who in twenty years will be as obscure as the third string linebacker on the Falcons.
Hey, here’s something. If it’s a clear day I might go out and stare at the sun. We all have a deficiency for Vitamin D, you know.
This will draw the guffaws of a lot of football coaches, colleagues in the fall who already think that I’m a communist for my affinity towards baseball. How can any sportswriter be serious about his craft if he sh–cans the Super Bowl?
Well, to quote sportscaster Jim Carr (another Slapshot reference), you can check my memory against the records when we next meet, maybe in Canton next December. You may live for this weekend – for Joe Buck, chili dip, Tostitos, and all those commercials…or James Michener.
I don’t.