Lessons from the Super Bowl

Like Urinating

I called a friend last night and caught him in a bar watching the Super Bowl. We had a nice chat and caught up, the game wasn't that engaging for him I suppose. I think that for most of us watching the Super Bowl is like urinating, you just do it. Such is the power of unrelenting marketing.

The British View

I'm copying this from the Independent in the UK:

If you have never watched American football, tonight's Super Bowl will be as incomprehensible a spectacle as an Aztec sacrifice would have been to the Conquistadors.

The game will be played in an air-conditioned stadium with a roof, in warm and mid-western Arlington, Texas (home ground of the Dallas Cowboys). From the roof are suspended the world's biggest HD video screens, each 60 yards long, so that the crowd in the stadium can see what's happening in close-up and watch the replays, essential to understanding the intricately choreographed brawl.

Although the rules change every year to make the game safer or more exciting for television (the latest change is a ban on hitting an opposing player helmet-first), the basics are simple.

The aim is to take the ball to the end zone of the 100-yard-long field. The team with the ball is allowed four attempts to advance 10 yards. Play stops every time the ball carrier is brought to the ground. If a team gains 10 yards, they start again with another four attempts. If they fail to gain 10 yards in three attempts, they usually use their fourth to kick the ball as far down field as they can.

There are two basic kinds of play:a run or a pass. For a pass, the quarterback, the leader of the offense, usually throws the one permitted forward pass. Look out for running back James Stark and wide receiver Antwaan Randle El.

By coincidence, today's evenly matched teams, the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, have a history in the game's rust-belt origins and are the only remaining working-class names in the league. The team from Green Bay, a port on Lake Michigan, was founded 92 years ago, sponsored by a meat packing company. But today's game would be as unrecognisable to the meat packers of inter-war Wisconsin as it would be to most Brits.

The players – 45 on each side since the introduction of unlimited substitutions – are in action for a few seconds at a time. Ninety minutes of playing time will take three-and-a-half hours in real time.

The half-time show, meanwhile, has become a grisly index of music-industry has-beenery, today featuring the Black Eyed Peas.

Ridiculous? Of course. But what a spectacle.

Super Child Sex-Trafficking

The Independent article that I copied the above piece from would never dare be written in the US. And not because everyone knows the bizarre rules. The article actually outlines the fact that 300,000 young girls (and one would imagine boys) are trafficked to the Super Bowl each year for sex. But under the bright lights, there is no sin.

M-V-P

The game of football revolves around the mythic quarterback. The individual who leads his band of heroes to victory. Apart from kicking plays, his office is always represented. He is invariably white and tall and god-like. If someone else wins the MVP award, they must be superhuman to wrench the spotlight from this mythic character. I can't imagine how anyone else could rise above the quarterback. The whole system is rigged against it. Sound familiar?

Cheese Heads Forever

Perhaps I'll close with some moderately interesting and inspiring reasons that it's good that Green Bay one the Super Bowl. But bear in mind that this is still just football--though the fact that I'm writing about it demonstrates that I'm a sucker for all that marketing I mentioned.

So Green Bay is actually owned by the community in much the same way a credit union is owned. As of June 2005, there are 112,015 owners. They elect a board of directors who operate the team. This structure allows a relatively small place like Green Bay (population approximately 100,000) to maintain a club.

In fact no other team in the league has this structure and it could no longer happen according to the NFL constitution which prescribes wealthy ownership. They were grandfathered in given their history. And while I'm sure they generate revenue for their 'shareholders', the team operates a foundation and supports worthy causes. And I don't think, like most NFL owners, that they are doing it for tax purposes.