I’m not going to watch the Super Bowl. I’m not taking a stand against a pop star and her three minutes of televised happiness. She’s one of the few people who can actually afford to be at the game, and that should count for something.
I’m not going to watch the game, because I’m just not a fan. The game lasts too long, the Super Bowl normally last 3 hours and 12 minutes. This is a game that has four quarters, each fifteen minutes long, and a halftime that is expanded to thirty minutes from the standard twelve. Add it up, and it doesn’t come to over three hours.
You have to allow time for commercials. Companies pay a lot of money, Taylor Swift kind of money to advertise during the Super Bowl. The commercials assume the role of legend.
Monday morning quarterbacks morph into Monday morning advertising executives, standing around the coffee maker discussing the effectiveness of the songs used to promote trucks, the portrayal of a poor, down on his luck plumber who discovered the secret to eternal happiness, a clean kitchen sink, and the beer, every other commercial is beer. Official beer of America.
Super Bowl pregame began sometime around the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Former players and pundits, play by play guys, have been sitting in suits and ties for decades. They have countless opinions, based on some archaic piece of trivia. It would make a better show, if they started in a hotel room, sitting in their pajamas, sipping coffee from one of those little pod makers, bickering back and forth about the benefits of a “Nickel Defense against a Bubble Screen.” And, when one of them showers, or relieves himself, the other people would criticize his beliefs. “Man, that guy is a moron, he wouldn’t know a jet sweep if it ate his complimentary Danish, in fact I think I’ll eat his complimentary Danish.”
I could probably get past that, possibly, but the money wasted is more than I can take. The Kansas City Chiefs have an annual payroll of one hundred, twenty-five million, nine hundred twenty thousand, two hundred and ninety-two dollars. That’s only the base salary, without bonuses. And it’s only the players, it doesn’t factor in management staff, coaches, doctors and physical therapists, trainers, accountants, kitchen and dining room staff, janitors, bus drivers, the grounds crew, who knows what else. If you look on the sideline there are a lot of people milling around, varying in degrees of interest, and intensity, and they are not included in the $125,920,292.00 figure. I’m sure the Chiefs aren’t the only team with a monstrous payroll.
There are 32 teams in the NFL. All of them are competing for the Lombardi trophy. Or whatever they give to the winner of the Super Bowl, and it’s probably a safe bet that money is no object. What’s the point of owning a team if you can’t labor under the illusion that a championship would mean something? Something besides a bit of luck and a lot of cash.
Sunday I’ll be watching something else, probably re-runs. I like the solidness of shows that no longer have anything to prove, weathered the years, and, like me are showing their age. Something simple and inexpensive,
—
iStock image
