What the Super Bowl really needs is more parades, more food, more prime time coverage, and some iconic animated TV specials
—
If we are ever going to truly perfect our Super Bowl excess, its time for us to “go all in” and fully embrace it.
If the Super Bowl hype is too loud, you’re too old. Or too sensible. Or too diverse of interest and taste. Or just too protective of the fragile gift of sanity.
Super Bowl hype is like the heavy metal we listened to as teenagers: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Jethro Tull. . . . It is meant to be experienced at the threshold of pain. Turn the volume down and you lose all the lack of nuance. Crank it until the flight-or-flight reflex kicks in, and you experience the kind of primal ecstasy Viking berserkers felt before sacking a monastery.
It is far beyond a cliché to observe that Super Bowl hype has gone over the top. We should concentrate instead on ways to push it even further. The Super Bowl reached its place in American culture not just because we love football, but because we are desperate for something to do between New Year’s Eve and spring besides shovel snow and worry about the coded messages in our Valentine’s Day gifts. The Super Bowl is our February holiday, and we need to celebrate it like a true American one: noisily, unapologetically and a little stupidly.
We are already way past embracing the idea of making the Super Bowl a National Holiday. In fact, we did that years ago. And we pretty much have consensus on that one.
What we need to explore next – we need to; its a slow sports week – is how to take the volume on the hype and really push the boundaries: its time to turn it up to eleven.
♦♦♦
So what can we do to make the spectacle of the Super Bowl even more outlandishly over the top?
We’re so glad you asked. SportsonEarth.com’s Mike Tanier has made a few terrific suggestions, which we summarized, with some added exclamation (!!), for your reading pleasure:
- Add a massive spectacular Super Bowl Parade! Like if the Thankgiving Day Parade and the Rose Bowl Parade had a baby. A big chubby obnoxious baby.
- (Even) more food! The massively unhealthy kind.
- An animated television special! Why should Christmas and Rudolf have a monopoly on sentimental claymation? And wouldn’t a Charlie Brown Special map right onto the football theme?! But wait its the 21st century. There’s lot of action-packed video game content that could be re-packaged to make a football special for the ages, and there is already a built-in football gaming brand. Paging John Madden.
- Move the ridiculous spectacle of Media Day to Prime Time television spot, like the Oscars and the Grammys! Then we can “watch it” on Facebook and Twitter, commenting snarkily with our friends about the inane questions and repetitive answers. We can look on in mouth-agape-horror as people who probably shouldn’t be given a microphone hold court for hours on end. There are surely new drinking games begging to be invented here.
♦♦♦
We already have something big. Something wonderful. Something – well – Super. Let’s make it super duper.
Who’s with me?
—
This story orignally appeared as Mandatory Monday: Super Spectacle on SportsonEarth.com. The complete article may be read in full here.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
This post was originally published on January 31, 2015. Five years later, its still perfect. So we re-ran it!