I watched the Super Bowl.
I even had some kind of idea what was going on! Finally, I was able to succumb to peer pressure/the desire for an excuse to eat excessive amounts of junk food and watch the game, without needing to protest lamely that I "only watch it for the commercials." In a somewhat vain effort to relate to other human beings, I had been following the Bears this season, catching most the games. They had a pretty good run, and at least there's the consolation that they got knocked out by the team that would be the WORLD CHAMPIONS.
World champions. Seems kind of silly, considering that all the teams are from America. Then again, no-one else in the world really cares about football. Football of the American variety, anyway. For clarity, I will use "futbol" for the world-cup variety and "futbawl" for the Super Bowl kind. Anyway, no-one else in the world really cares about futbawl. It's like a small town in Canada came up with some silly sport, like "ice-ball" or "curling," then declared the winner of the town's competition the "World Champion." Change "small town in Canada" to "world's last remaining superpower" and suddenly it makes sense, right? It's certainly not as egregious as the "World Series," of course, because in that case there are other baseball-playing nations about. Hell, they even beat us regularly when ACTUAL world championships are held (I am told, however, that this is because we don't have nothin' to prove to nobody (and even if any of our star players join in, they're ordered by the people that actually pay them not to try too hard to avoid injury)).
That's one thing, but the announcers also called it "the sports world's largest stage" a few times. This year's super bowl was indeed the most watched program in American television history, drawing 111 million viewers (source). Meanwhile, the futbol world cup final last year drew more than 700 million viewers (source). That counts all those gigantic squares of fans outside stadiums watching a giant screen as one, by the way. It's almost like the Super Bowl is 1/7th the size of the "sports world's largest stage." Hell, most premier league games probably have a higher global viewership than 111 million. Turns out there are over 6 billion people that aren't American, and couldn't give half a crap about futbawl. Just some perspective that we as a country refuse to acknowledge, I guess.
The most important thing to realize, of course, is that the world cup's viewership is split up across the entire world, shown on hundreds of networks in as many languages. The Super Bowl, on the other hand, is kept right here and on one, single network that has done unspeakable things to gain the privilege. Why is this the most important thing? Why don't you ask some overpaid and underperforming ad agencies? They fit both of those monikers even better than most New York sports teams this time around. I was especially happy I didn't have to watch this particular Super Bowl "for the ads," because it would have been a total waste. I refuse to name any names, though. I'm pretty sure that most of them were intended to be as tasteless and/or mind-bendingly stupid as possible so as to make people talk about the ad and inadvertently mention the brand repeatedly in doing so. This solidifies it in our subconscious minds so that when we go to the marketplace and see it next to 4 competitors which are empirically equivalent in every way, we choose theirs. I refuse to let them win. I will, however, admit that they certainly reached new lows.
Well, there is one ad that I will allow to claim victory over me. It is VW, and they had the only good commercial. This makes them deserve additional advertising. It is not because of their cars, but because that ad was adorable.
Speaking of overpaid and underperforming, the Black Eyed Peas' performance was honestly worse than some of my middle school orchestra concerts. For more of that perspective I mentioned earlier, compare it to the opening ceremonies three years ago in Beijing. It's totally absurd. Even beyond the fact that all of them really, really need Autotune (not to mention that you couldn't have really heard their singing even if you wanted to for some reason), they couldn't even get the weird blinking assholes to walk around the stage in a real circle (I believe this fine fellow on The Internet illustrates the point rather well). Fergie's blinking futbawl armor couldn't protect her from her inability to sing "Sweet Child of Mine," making a totally gratuitous cameo by Slash even worse (and bringing fears of "wardrobe malfunctions" to an all-time high). Part of the giant word-stage that was supposed to be the finale didn't even light up.
We, as Americans, are complacent. We think that whatever fantastic sum was spent to let some terrible singers gambol about in flashing costumes was well-spent, and good enough. We think the final of our home-grown brand of violence is the biggest sporting event in the world. We're entitled, lazy, and sloppy. We can't even get someone to sing the national anthem who knows all the words, but we preface it with a reading of our Declaration of Independence (with the boring parts expurgated, of course).
The President said we were living in a Sputnik Moment. Most of those who have gone through the public school system recently were probably unsure of what he was talking about--what is a sputnik?
Yes, I appreciate the irony that a post beginning with the revelation that I actually cared about the game this time proceeded to expend not a single letter on the game the rest of the way through. Go Packers?
