One advantage of being in my 70s is that I have seen every Super Bowl. I may have missed one if aliens abducted me, but I doubt it. So, I have seen how the event has evolved over the decades.
I can even remember when the NFL and AFL did their own thing–never the twain to meet. For years the conventional wisdom was the the AFL was far less talented and not an even match. That seemed true for a couple of Bowls until “Broadway” Joe Namath proved that was wrong. He also may have launched the idea of product placement when he advertised in women’s nylons.
Since then, there has been a wide variety of Super Bowls with some being great and some real stinkers. Of course, even for the stinkers the team that squashed its opponents thought it was a great game such as when underdog Washington thrashed the Broncos.
Of course, the game this week was great even though my Eagles lost. It will go down as one of the Great Super Bowls!
This brings me to my point. Why do we need all of the hoopla–AKA crap? The early Super Bowls were relatively simple affairs– even played during daylight hours. This year everyone was introduced including honorary coin tossers. (How many people does it take to toss a coin?) When they displayed the Lombardy Trophy, Doug Williams, the first black Super Bowl candidate was actually wearing white gloves. It reminded me of a scene from an ante-bellum film. “Don’t let Massa see that you touched the silver with your bare hands.” I know if a white person held the trophy, he would have worn gloves, too, but the optics were wrong. The person singing the National Anthem dragged it out so long, I didn’t know if he’d finish before Halftime.
The two parts of hoopla I liked were the women pilots doing the flyby and the little girl handing the ball to the ref before the second half and being photographed. That gave her an experience she will never forget. We could done without the other stuff, and let the game carry the excitement.
What about half-time? I guess I am an originalist here like the Supreme Court. Why not the bands marching in complex formations? Rihana sang some good songs, but I feared she would miscarry the way she was jumping around. We didn’t need a couple hundred people dressed as snow men gyrating about flashing their navels.
Finally, the commercials were part for the course. Some were so creative that you couldn’t tell what product was advertised. That is a marketing “no-no.” Others were so unimaginative that you wonder why spend the money? The Jesus ads were ok, but I wondered if Fox would have accepted a commercial “Allah loves you.”
In conclusion, I liked the game but feel like I used more hours in my life than I should have to do.