Super Bowl Sunday….

Well, the day has arrived. Super Bowl Sunday….

Great…big flipping deal….

Every year about this time I quit caring about football, often this lack of caring takes place quite a bit earlier in the year. There are multiple reasons for this…in no particular order:

1. The Chiefs aren’t involved. According to legend the Chiefs are not Super-Bowl victory-less, but as far as I’m concerned that’s complete mythology. The best the Chiefs have done in my lifetime is a conference finals appearance with Joe Montana at the helm. Gee, what happened in that game? The Chiefs were getting stifled, and then suddenly seemed to wake up, followed by the Bills knocking Joe into next month. That was the end of Joe.
2. Football gets boring. There’s a reason that football is so popular: The season is short. Hockey and basketball need to wake up about this (and baseball has gone so far the opposite way I don’t even think about it). Having a season that lasts 8-9 months is just too long. The NFL realizes that people aren’t that interested in football, and so they limit its availability to just 6 or so months a year. Perfect! The season is so short that most teams aren’t eliminated until late in the year, keeping interest up, and the once-a-week formula allows a little bit of hype to build up (but not too much). Unfortunately for me, I lose interest much faster. I don’t really ‘wake up’ to football until around the middle of October, and I’m sorta done by early December (unless the Chiefs are rolling).
3. Too much sappiness. Football players are heroes, they are modern American saviors. They should be included in the pantheon alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. A guy like Brett Favre will make you a better person just by having a conversation with him. At least, that’s what the announcers would have you believe.
4. Football is a pretty conservative league. Let’s see, no guaranteed contracts, a hard cap as low as the NBA’s soft cap (with about 45 more players), few minority coaches, ridiculous fines and reactions to ‘inappropriate behavior.’ Considering the average lifespan of an NFL player is ten-fifteen years less than an average US citizen…I’d think the NFL should be a little more player friendly.
5. Atheletes? With all due respect to Sumo wrestlers, I just don’t get how some of these guys can be considered ‘atheletes.’ What’s the first image that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “An extremely atheletic man”? Is it really a 330 pound Warren Sapp? Or is it a lean, lethal LeBron James (whose a taller person)? Does anyone really think that Reggie White was more ‘built’ than Karl Malone?

On the plus side, the NFL is neat because there are no superstars. In the NBA everybody plays both sides, and each player is 1/5^th of his team at any given time. In baseball the real game is all between the hitter and the pitcher (fielding is some teamwork, but only come into play when/if the pitcher fails). In football every player is important, but none (except the QB maybe) are vastly more important than everyone else.

So, those are my Super Bowl Sunday thoughts. I’d elaborate (or edit) but my wrists are, again, killing me. So I’m going to stop writing.

Later