The Super News Is That It’s All Over

Since I live with four women, I can convey the analogy that watching the Super Bowl is like going to the mall with my wife and three daughters. It takes much longer than they say it will and I feel hollow when it’s over.

The penultimate playing of professional football’s final game started five minutes later than expected and finished over ninety minutes longer than anyone imagined. In between the four and a half hours of gridiron gladiators colliding against each other for the right to hold a blunt object with Vince Lombardi’s name engraved was lot stuff that looked like entertainment.

There were multi-million dollar ads that ranged from the lowest common denominator of shock and oh hell naw to the one notch above lowest common denominator of sentimentality through grave robbing. Beyonce Knowles Z gave a halftime performance that introduced boys to gyrating, barely covered body parts and girls to highly paid stripper power. Destiny’s Child showed up to remind people why Kelly Rowland should be more famous than Beyonce and Michelle Williams was lucky her manager at the Houston Denny’s let her off for the night. Then things really got interesting.

Somebody forgot to put the power bill in their mama’s name and for 34 minutes half the Superdome and all of the game’s announcers were in the dark and unable to communicate. The Baltimore Ravens were leading 28-6 with thirteen minutes left in the third quarter and appeared to be on their way to blowing out the San Francisco 49ers. When the power of Beyonce’s ego allowed the New Orleans grid to come back, San Francisco came back, and the Ravens held on for a 34-31 victory. As expected, obstructor of justice and Mr. Calm Cool and Collected NOT, linebacker Ray Lewis decided to talk about himself, and no one died. Trust me, with Killer Preacher Ray, that’s a big deal.

The Bowl of Super started out as an athletic showcase between the winners of the AFL and NFL in 1967. Since that was before the Internet, no one cares. Today, the big-time Big Game is an opium den of corporate ooze and pop culture nonsense that allows an organization of pjhysical freaks to call themselves champions. The game wasn’t bad. Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco served his critics a big bowl of suck it and became an elite pigskin slinger. He was so good he was named MVP, dropped an F Bomb in front of a billion people, and no one died.

His teammate, receiver Anquan Boldin made some of the best catches I’ve ever seen. 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis and running back Frank Gore had terrific games despite their team’s mammoth mistakes. The ads were a mix of muck (Go Daddy), maybe (Dodge trucks conjuring the spirit of Paul Harvey), and meh (Deion Sanders as Leon Sandcastle and the Dorito’s one with a hipster selling his chip addicted goat) and the tweets during the blackout showed that America’s best comedy writers sometimes sit on their couches with heartburn from beer, wings, and chili.

Next year’s Hyperbole Match will be in the New York area, specifically, the new Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. Since everything is better in New York (don’t believe me, just ask them) the hype, greed, deeper cultural abyss will be grander. The game will be played outdoors so let’s hope the half-time show is sponsored by a quality heater company. And Kelly Rowland does her own set.