Super Bowl Super Letdown

Don't misunderstand the title of this post. I'm not complaining about the quality of play in this year's Super Bowl. For the last two years the Super Bowl has been an outstanding game, and this year's Super Bowl has to rank up there as one of the great ones of all time.

What I'm writing about today is how little I cared about this year's Super Bowl despite all of the great story lines that came out of this year's game. After all, this was the Arizona Cardinals, a team no one thought even belonged in the playoffs, making it all the way to the Super Bowl. And the Pittsburgh Steelers were going for their records sixth Super Bowl title. Not to mention that the Steelers are in the Bengals' division and thus I had a rooting interest for them. Despite all of that, I never got very enthused about the game.

My interest was so little, in fact, that when Lisa and I ran into some friends at a wedding Friday night who weren't planning to watch the game, we decided to join them in a Super bowl boycott. So instead of watching the game on a big screen at somebody's Super Bowl party, the four of us and our kids met at our house--where we don't have a big screen TV--and played cards instead. Sure, at halftime we watched the big 3-d show (what a letdown) and watched Bruce Springsteen perform (what a bigger letdown), but we didn't watch the first half at all! Once we'd seen the halftime show we just sort of kept the TV on and saw the second half, but despite the exciting conclusion, I never really got into it.

I'm not sure what was different this year. But I have three theories:

1) I think the dreary news of the day--the wars, the economy--may have affected me. It's hard to celebrate when retirement accounts are shrinking and you start counting how many years are left until retirement and wondering if there's any way you'll at least be back to even by then.

2) No matter what happened this year, it was most likely going to be a letdown. After all, last year's Super Bowl will almost certainly go down in history as the greatest Super Bowl of all time. The undefeated Goliath of the New England Patriots, who had mowed down almost every team it had faced and had posted the first 18-0 record ever in the NFL, vanquished by the New York Giants, who--despite their mascot--were playing the "David" role in this story. The escape and throw by Manning...the catch on the helmet by Tyree...even though the Steelers' comeback was just as exciting and just as athletic, it just couldn't compare. Last year when the Giants scored to take the lead late in the game, I leaped out of my seat and screamed in triumph. It was an exciting moment, something that comes along only once a decade or so,* and it was inevitable that this year would pale in comparison.

3) Maybe it's just that I'm getting older. I've seen hundreds of "big games" in my life, from Super Bowls to World Series games to NCAA basketball tournaments to big conference games of all kinds, and I just don't think I can get really excited about them anymore. The transient impermanence of it all strikes me now. How many games can really be "The game of the century"? Just one, right? The rest of these "colossal events" are just one more game, one more block of several hours that I'm never going to get back. Heck, I don't even watch basketball AT ALL anymore, and I only watch a little baseball. I keep up with football because it's my favorite sport, but even as I watch it sometimes I think, "Why am I watching this game that glorifies violence? It's almost as bad as hockey or boxing!" I think I am just getting too old to think sports are important...because I know they're not.

Whatever the reason, I just didn't get very enthused about the big game. And I don't see my attitude changing any time soon.

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*In fact, I remember the last time I got so excited about a game: When the University of Kentucky men's basketball team defeated Duke in the Elite 8 in 1998 after trailing by 18 points early in the second half. As Kentucky kept inching closer and closer to Duke Lisa and I kept inching closer and closer to the TV screen, so that when Kentucky finally hit a three pointer to take the lead we had our noses practically touching the screen. We both jumped into the air screaming and hugging each other--you would have thought we knew somebody on the team!