The Super Bowl is my annual reminder of what’s wrong with America. Or right. Depends on your perspective. If you don’t mind consumerism beyond all reason, you might just love the Super Bowl. If you hate the plasticized overblown overbearing spectacle of the whole thing, the Super Bowl is “Exhibit A” for the prosecution.
This isn’t necessarily an indictment of the American consumer…not entirely. The blame rests mostly in two camps: Corporate America and the big “G” Gambling industry. They’re the ones who took a game and turned it into…whatever this is. I turned on the TV at 6:30 this morning to a commercial, followed by about 30 seconds of the Fox crew riding to the stadium in golf carts…followed by a cut to more commercials. This was a full two hours before the game, which was supposed to start at 8:30. But we know that tossing the coin…brought to you by someone, I’m sure (I refuse to watch anything that is not actually the game)…was going to take a good 10 minutes. And we all know that the coin toss is of the utmost importance. People bet millions on it.
And that’s what it’s all about. Sponsors. Gamblers. Billions. Every. Single. Angle. Covered. The goal is to suck as much money out of the American consumer as possible…and, especially in the case of gambling, even more.
Anything of actual value that represents the character of the players or the game – the quality of the men in the trenches, the sweat and hard work of every person who fought to be there — is bulldozed by the money. The game only matters in what it makes for its owners.
Now, I can’t write it off in its entirety. I mean, I barely care. And I’m not going to sit here typing away about how there are people living on the streets in the shadow of the very stadium that is hosting this spectacle. This won’t change anything. People are entitled to have their fun in whatever way they can. It’s just that it seems that something’s missing. Like, the whole element of anyone caring about the actual game. It’s hard enough, with the advent of fantasy football as big business, to look beyond individual players in multiple games. The Super Bowl is just more of the same. Far too many people, at the root of it, are into it only for what they can get out of it.
This is a sad state of affairs to be sure; but in this day and age, not unexpected. The actual game this year seemed to redeem itself, much to the joy…or chagrin, of the people who watched. It just depends on the bets you made…
I was mildly interested in the coin toss when I read someone’s suggestion that it be tossed by the Mom of the two brothers playing on opposing teams