Notes from the Super Bowl

Notes from the Super Bowl

Nicolaus Mills: Notes from the Super Bowl

It is not clear where the Super Bowl ranks on our list of national holidays, but there is no doubt that it is climbing in popularity. Judging by the number of gatherings it is responsible for, it has already surpassed Presidents Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, and it is closing in on the Fourth of July. The reasons for this development are not hard to figure out. The Super Bowl satisfies our need for a holiday we don?t have to think twice about. It lets us avoid worrying about the bad wars we have fought, our racism, our cruelty to Native Americans.

Like millions of other Americans, I spent last night watching the Super Bowl with friends. Where I cheated was in keeping notes on how my day went.

President Obama?s Pregame Interview
The president continued his custom of doing a pregame interview with whatever network was televising the Super Bowl. He didn?t make an exception for Fox, where he rarely receives a nice word. Fox sent Bill O?Reilly to meet with the president at the White House, and O?Reilly was on his best behavior. He began by thanking the president for his help in freeing Fox reporters who were detained by the Egyptian police. The president was his usual charming self, but also his increasingly disappointing self. O?Reilly accused Obama of wanting to redistribute income. The president insisted he did not?a good reply for O?Reilly?s listeners, but a blown chance to talk about the importance of not becoming a nation of haves and have-nots.

The Star-Spangled Banner
There was lots of patriotism in the opening ceremonies. Why not? We are engaged in two wars. The trouble came when pop star Christina Aguilera sang the ?Star-Spangled Banner.? The high notes were impossible for her to reach with her limited register, but her big problem was with the words. ?O?er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? came out as ?What so proudly we watched at the twilight?s last reaming.? Understandably, nobody in the Fox announcers? booth mentioned the error. I had never thought our national anthem could be made dirty. Hopefully, Saturday Night Live will not pass up the opportunity for a sketch on what Aguilera was thinking. Defending herself, Aguilera issued a statement in which she declared, ?I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem came through.?

Commercials
There were a string of commercials that referred back to earlier Super Bowl ads. The assumption by the advertisers was that Americans may not have much of a sense of history, but they do remember commercials from decades ago. Such nostalgia is hard to quarrel with. What I was struck by was the raunchiness of the commercials. Teleflora, a flower delivery service, had a commercial in which the singer Faith Hill advises a nervous young man to send his girlfriend a message from the heart. He finally agrees to do so. ?Dear Kim,? he e-mails, ?Your rack is unreal.? That more women than ever are watching football never seemed to occur to Teleflora.

Ticket Fraud
An estimated 1,250 people had tickets for temporary seats at Cowboys Stadium that were declared unsafe. In the rush to add to their revenues, the Cowboys hadn?t properly checked the seats. It was an embarrassing tribute to greed that went virtually unreported by Fox. In this case, they could be excused for believing there had to be some limit to the finger pointing they did over the course of the game. The Cowboys also charged fans $200 to sit just outside the stadium and watch the game on giant screens.

Labor Troubles
National Football League owners are threatening the players with a lockout. They want the players, who now get 59.5 percent of profits, to take a smaller share, and they want to add two more games to the football season. The catch is that NFL owners are not prepared to open their books and show what their profits are. A major showdown is looming. It is easy in the midst of the recession for fans to dismiss the players as greedy. Many are multimillionaires. What fans forget is the average NFL player has a short career. This is not a job you get better at once you hit thirty. Worse still, the injury problems that most seriously affect football players?from joint replacement to early-onset Alzheimer?s as a result of accumulated blows to the head?typically show up after their careers end. What the players need from the NFL is long-term health care and a way of having their salaries paid out over a number of years rather than all at once. (What the players really want is not yet clear.) A victory by the NFL Players? Association at a time when the job security of teachers and government workers is being threatened would have significance far beyond the football field. It is, however, a link DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the Players? Association, seems reluctant to make.

Half Time
This year?s half-time show was performed by the Black Eyed Peas, a hip hop group that features the rapper will.i.am and the singer Fergie (the first female performer at the Super Bowl since Janet Jackson?s ?wardrobe malfunction? in 2004). Dressed, as the New York Times put it, like a ?friendly alien delegation from Star Trek,? they put on a pleasant show that parents and grandparents could enjoy. Their blandness was a reminder that missing from the game was the usual assortment of cheerleaders. Pittsburgh and Green Bay, with their working-class roots, are among the few teams in the NFL that don?t have professional cheerleaders.

The Game
The game, which Green Bay won 31-25, was close. The fans got a treat. Pittsburgh blew a chance to go ahead in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter. For the moralists in the crowd, it was a just victory. The game pitted the young, up-and-coming Green Bay quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, who overcame two concussions this season, against the hulking Pittsburgh quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, who began the season with a four-game suspension after being charged, for the second time within a year, of sexual assault. Rodgers passed for three touchdowns and was named the game?s MVP. Roethlisberger threw two interceptions and was dogged by receivers who often seemed unsure of the pass routes they should be taking.

Food for Thought
At 4:00 p.m. my local supermarket on the Upper West Side in New York was crowded with people buying junk food. I had stopped there to pick up a bottle of seltzer to go along with the raisins and loaf of rye bread from Zabar?s that I was taking to friends. The man in the checkout line in front of me had a shopping cart filled with potato chips and Budweiser six packs. ?Super Bowl food?? I asked. ?Yes,? he replied. ?The trick is to make sure there is nothing nutritional.? Far better than me, he had captured the spirit of the day.