There I was Sunday, trying to think of reasons why I should watch the Green Bay Packers play the Denver Broncos in the 32nd Super Bowl. Heaven help me, I couldn't find one.
I had missed the two Super Bowls before this one, figuring there were plenty of reasons not to watch. First among them was that the game is usually a turkey. I could hear the gobbling even during the pregame show. Typically, Super Bowls have been so pathetic I've taken to bestowing other monikers on the game: the Stupor Bowl, the Stink Bowl, the Choke Bowl, the Toilet Bowl.
Sunday's game was one of the rare good ones. Alas, there are more reasons not to watch the Super Bowl than that the game usually turns out to be dreadful. To list a few:
A sense of priorities: Exactly when did professional football become this country's state religion? Somewhere along the line, pro football went from being a pleasant Sunday afternoon diversion to a mania. Super Bowl Sunday is a virtual holiday. Our passion for pro football, indeed all pro sports, has gone from a harmless hankering to worship.
Mind you, there is a definite need for pro sports. They provide for us a cathartic release and divert America's attention from its one true sports love: male-on-male violence. Our history shows it. For years, lynching victims in the South were white males. After the Civil War, the victims were mainly black males. In some locations, lynching was indeed a sport, with attendees bringing lunches and snacks and turning the gruesome affairs into picnics.
That's why it's no accident that lynching decreased in the United States as the popularity of sports - particularly pro sports - increased. It's not because we as Americans got any nicer. We didn't. We just have another outlet for our violent tendencies. Without pro sports, American men might well return to gleefully slaughtering each other as we did in days of yore.
So I'm all for the Super Bowl as diversion. It's when we elevate it to religion that I get nervous.
A sense of loyalty: The Houston Oilers are now the Tennessee Oilers. The Los Angeles Rams are now the St. Louis Rams, the St. Louis Cardinals the Phoenix Cardinals, the Baltimore Colts the Indianapolis Colts and, most revolting of all, the Cleveland Browns some team named the Baltimore Ravens.
