I’ve made a. big deal about the fact that I never watch the Super Bowl.
It’s the perfect example of American Bloat, a game that seemingly goes on forever. With 30-second ads selling for $7 million, the commercials have become an incredibly big deal. A great deal of time and effort goes into rating the best and worst ads each year.
And for many viewers, the ads are more entertaining than the game itself.
The problem is that there is nothing in our popular culture that is as overhyped as the Super Bowl, and when one franchise has won six times in the last 20 years, you had better be one of their fans or you’ve had a rough century.
There are two franchises I used to care about — the pre-Snyder Washington Redskins and the Denver Broncos in the John Elway era. I watched every minute of Super Bowl XXVI, the last one in which Washington played, and the same for XXXIII, which was Elway’s final game of a Hall of Fame career.
Then there was XXVII of January 31st, 1993, at the Rose Bowl. It was the last time before today the game was played in he Los Angeles area, and it was one of the worst games. Dallas beat Buffalo, 52-17, and it was the only Super Bowl I ever attended. I was covering it as a reporter, and I saw Garth Brooks sing the National Anthem and Michael Jackson do the halftime show.
It wasn’t much of a game, certainly not reminiscent of an early Super Bowl when a reporter asked Dallas running back Duane Thomas how it felt to win the ultimate game.
Thomas had the perfect answer.
“If it’s the ultimate game, why do they play it every year?”