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Friday, January 19
Super game or super spectacle?
By Mark Kreidler
ESPN.com
And now this brief questionnaire from the Committee to Construct a Super Bowl That Holds America's Attention For More Than 3.6 Seconds:
What is it that you people WANT?
Two Sundays hence, the Baltimore Ravens will be taking on the New York Giants in a game that thrillingly matches the two best rushing defenses in professional football, to say nothing of the electricity that crackles when two quarterbacks like Trent Dilfer and Kerry Collins take the field, and when you further consider that ... zzzzzZZZZZ.
|  | | Super Bowl XXXIV provided plenty of drama when Kevin Dyson was stopped a yard short of the end zone on the final play of the game. |
Whoa, sorry, our bad. But this is the meeting of the two conference champions, right? It's not like the seventh and eighth seeds somehow sneaked into the title game, is it? This is the best of the best, and isn't that what America constantly clamors for in the name of democracy, to see the best battle the best for the right to be called the Best of the Best?
Or, to consider the other side of the coin for just a moment, is it possible that -- to quote a high-ranking Page 2 source on this here very web site -- "The NFL sucks"?
Don't blame poor Hunter S. He's in the same leaky boat as the rest of America when it comes to this stuff. The problem isn't the Super Bowl in and of itself; the problem is that, as a sporting nation, we still haven't achieved anything approaching a consensus on what we want the Super Bowl to be.
Is it really supposed to be the game to end all games? This was the NFL's marketing strategy for years, you know; and what a colossal misfire that was. You get past the Jets over the Colts in 1969, which was a game of true resonance and consequence, and it is quite nearly all downhill to the year '01. As one of the contestants in an early Super Bowl asked, "If this is the ultimate game, why do they play it again next year?"
It isn't as though no interesting tilts have ever transpired on Super Sunday -- any fan of the Steelers, Cowboys, 49ers or Packers could tell you differently. Heck, the game a year ago between Tennessee and St. Louis went down to the final foot or so, and several of the Bud Bowls tightened up considerably after halftime. But "interesting" and "compelling" are sometimes not as closely related as one might suggest them to be, and the Super Bowl has been so weighted down by drag-ass dogs over the years that it has acquired a reputation that can be hard to shake.
Again, though, that's getting awfully specific. Ask your standard football fan what he wants from the Super Bowl and the answer will be anything from a wire-tight finish that comes down to Scott Norwood for the win to, "Remember when that guy rode the jet-pack into the sky during the pre-game while he was wearing that goony looking helmet? That was cool."
It's hard, once you've been a carnival midway, to go back to being just a game, and this partially explains why the Super Bowl has so often produced an F in Football 101. There may be scant statistical evidence to suggest that the two-week break between conference championships and the Big One breeds greater blowouts and more lousy finishes than a single week, but it's an absolutely sure thing that the two-week break produces a rash of hideous media over-coverage, death by analysis and talk-radio lockjaw.
A very basic issue with the Super Bowl is its perennial inability to rise up to the level of its hype, and you could be forgiven for wondering if it isn't simply a football thing. The NBA Finals, the World Series, the Stanley Cup Finals -- these are events that require days and days of actual playing, of actual results, to even approach the verge of determining a champion. By the time those series end, you've often witnessed either a sensational back-and-forth struggle or a defining, sustained, dominating moment in a franchise's history.
The Super Bowl? Sorry, no. The Super Bowl is four quarters and out, and if it goes bad there's just no way to redeem it. That's football. If Buffalo lays an egg or the Broncos of old allow Washington to score 35 unanswered points in one half, it's simply over forever -- ain't no Game 2. And even at the conference-champion level, it is amazing how many times the big game has produced one team that was ridiculously more prepared than the other.
It may be asking too much anymore to attach any lasting meaning to the Super Bowl. Dynastic behavior is utterly out of the question -- Brett Favre won one, John Elway won two, and that's as good as it's going to get for awhile -- and so the casual fan turns to the television with no particular feeling that they are about to witness the beginning of a great run for any given franchise. Whether the Giants or Ravens win on Jan. 28, there won't be anybody anywhere who walks away talking about how a new era of greatness is under way in New York or Baltimore. In the parity-addled '00's, things change far too quickly for that kind of monument-building.
And so perhaps the game isn't to be the thing. Maybe we just all go the other way. It could be time to jettison the aesthetic requirements altogether and simply go with the flow of Super Bowl week. Forget the game; maybe somebody famous will do something funny with a lap-dancer on the Thursday before kickoff. In other words, "Yeah, yeah, two good teams, but how about that Styx concert in the middle of the thing?"
Memo to Hunter S.: We feel your pain. It looks bleak from inside the compound. But look at it this way: We'll always
have N'Sync.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a Web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.
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