Not So Super Sunday

You can't get away from it.  The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and what a festival it will be.  Even odds that the halftime show will be more interesting than the second half of the game.

Tell me, why all the hype?  When was the last time the Super Bowl (the actual game) was remotely interesting?  Of the last six Super Bowls, three have been entertaining -- oddly enough, the three that involved the New England Patriots.  You know this thing is going to be a blowout.  You know that the final score will be something like, oh, 41 to 10, but you're still going to be glued to the television.  I have no clue which team will win the Super Bowl, but I can tell you that the game won't be that interesting.  If I had to make a pick, I'd say the Colts (would YOU want to have Rex Grossman at quarterback?) but all I know is that the game won't be that fun.

Of course, I'll be watching.  Why?

The Super Bowl is the only thing on!

Absolutely nobody wants to compete with the Super Bowl.  Nobody.  The other two major leagues playing this time of year, the NBA and NHL, have nicely decided to plan things so that their only games of the day will be over in plenty of time for the fans of the teams involved to get home and park on the couch to watch the Super Bowl.  College basketball, too.  Fully sixteen of the 300-plus college basketball teams will be playing on Sunday, and no game has a starting time after 3:30 Eastern.

If you put a gun to my head and asked me why the Super Bowl is so popular, I still wouldn't be able to tell you.  For every Super Bowl that's actually good, there are four or five duds in there.  I'm convinced most people watch the Super Bowl just to see the commercials, and maybe the halftime show -- but sorry, folks, you're never going to see an exposed breast during the halftime show again.  It's not like the early Super Bowls were fun to watch or something.  It's like a conspiracy.  The Super Bowl gets high ratings because nothing else is on.  No network wants to compete with the Super Bowl.

Of course, take this with a grain of salt.  I also can't explain why the NFL is so popular.  I was very much in the minority the other day when I admitted to my friends that I think baseball is more fun to watch than the Super Bowl.  And I'm in a very small minority when I say that I'd much rather watch a "meaningless" mid-May game between the Brewers and the Padres than watch the Super Bowl (or any NFL game, for that matter.)  But I'm the kind of guy who lives, eats, and breathes sports.  My regular readers know that I can't stand football's once-a-week schedule, leaving the talking heads on ESPN plenty of time to talk about the games that happened on Sunday for an entire week.  Of course, I'm also annoyed that baseball only plays games at night, for the most part, except on Wednesdays and weekends.

But I'm left with no choice but to watch the Super Bowl.  I couldn't care less who wins, and I don't care for the game (or even the league!), but I can't call myself a sports fan and not watch the Super Bowl.  That's just how it is.