The Super Bowl, in the eyes of real sports fans, is for the tourists. It’s not just that you must sift through the clutter of all the off-field hype for an interminable two weeks, or that it’s the one sporting event covered by morning talk-show hosts who otherwise have no apparent connection to the world of football today. (Like, say, Tiki Barber.) It’s that the actual game of football, at the moment when it is supposed to be at its glorious peak, is utterly irrelevant. It is impossible to keep up the appropriate level – the expected level — of psychotic fandom when the pregame show is 10 hours long, three-quarters of the people at your party are sprinting into the room when the commercials come on and Vegas is taking bets on the duration of the inevitable Tom Petty nipple slip. When the Patriots and Giants take the field Sunday, a fan can be forgiven for thinking, for the first time, that the game itself is oddly small.
'Course, it doesn't help when the game action is less than compelling. In 51 games, the average point differential between winners and losers is 15.
Posted by Linkmeister at January 29, 2008 10:58 AM | TrackBack