Super Bowl

I was listening to the news on the radio the other day when I heard an AP story reporting that Usher and Slash would be surprise guests for the halftime show during the Super Bowl this weekend... can we really call it a surprise if it is being announced in national media four days before the big event?

In separate Super Bowl news, my extended family was discussing Super Bowl as a holiday on Facebook and someone posted this article from the LA Times about why the Super Bowl may be moving permanently to President's Day weekend. I am not sure the best way to honor our country's leaders and history is to usurp the weekend with football. I think enough people have a hard enough time remembering why we have a few Mondays off in February as it is; add the Super Bowl into the mix and we might as well stop teaching history to fifth graders and educate them instead on first downs and the arguments over instant replay.

Then the article went on to talk about how the NFL has been so successful at increasing viewership of the Super Bowl, saying: "Over the last decade, the NFL and its TV partners have undertaken several initiatives – some noisy and others subtle – designed not only to boost the league’s fan base, but its stature in the country as well. These moves have included aggressively promoting the NFL to women, creating more big events beyond the Super Bowl and not being shy about making the watching of a football game seem like a patriotic act." (Joe Flint, LA Times Online, 2/4/11)

Really? NFL fans watch the Super Bowl because they like football. I could be wrong, but I think that non-NFL fans watch the Super Bowl for two reasons: the commercials and the half-time show. This is the only time--ever--that we rush to the TV to watch the commercials instead of fast forwarding through them. And I have certainly would never watch football to feel patriotic. We all know that baseball is the American pasttime... Plus I want to know how they count these viewers, because I have been at a lot of Super Bowl parties in recent years, but I can't tell you that I actually watched the Super Bowl. Half the fun of the Super Bowl is the food and the football pool. The best kind of winning is when you win money for arbitrarily writing your name in a box.

All my complaining aside, we are hosting a Super Bowl party this year. Now if I only knew who was playing...