A few years ago I played in an indoor soccer league where my games were on Sunday nights during the winter. As I gazed at my schedule when it was passed out at the end of a team practice, I noticed one of our games was on Martin Luther King Day. I asked a friend why we weren't playing the game on the previous Sunday, to which he replied, "Come on man, that's Super Bowl Sunday."
So in conclusion, it made more sense to play our game on an actual holiday when we're supposed to remember the hardships of the civil rights struggle than on a day to eat potato chips and discuss commercials.
The above situation shows where the Super Bowl ranks in our society. It is the one day everyone's a sports fan, from the Emo kid in the tight pants and the scowl to the ditzy girl who's usually much more concerned with the relationship between Britney and Kevin than any ballgame. It's as close to national unity as we get.
Perhaps more than the sway the Super Bowl holds over us Americans is our belief in how it holds sway over the entire world. I always remember watching the Super Bowl and listening to the announcers say that the game is being broadcast around the world in 45,000 languages through 7 billion television sets. I was always impressed, imagining the whole world stopping, grabbing a bag of chips and watching the game.
In reality, at least in England, it couldn't be farther from the truth.
The newspapers were much more concerned about what happened in soccer matches the previous day then any silly championship we might have happening. Not to mention there's a huge rugby tournament going on right now, leaving the people in the United Kingdom to think we're all a bunch of wankers for wearing pads while rugby players wear nothing more than a mouth guard.
The only news on the game was that we had bleeped out the Rolling Stones when they played, showing once again what a prude and conservative nation we are. Combine this with a report on the amount of food we'd consumed as a nation during the Super Bowl, and that's all the news the British press saw fit to print. Not a line about the game, not even the score.
My Super Bowl Sunday was much different from any I'd ever had before. I was in a hotel room in Girona, Spain, as my flight back from a weekend in Barcelona had been canceled, leaving about 100 angry Brits, plus the eight others in my party, to figure out where to stay that night.
I watched one quarter of the game in Spanish and realized something. First, perhaps the rest of the world doesn't care because they don't show the commercials over here during the games, which is the reason all but the most testosterone-driven males in the United States tune in.
Secondly, what's the point of watching it alone? All my life I've watched the game with either friends or family. After all, it's more the point to see people and have a few laughs then to watch the game. Most of my Super Bowl memories are about the times I tossed around a football, saw my first AOL chat room and played "Super Mario Brothers 3" with the neighbors. Rarely are they about the actual game because, except for every once in a blue moon, they stink.
Without friends and family around, the 4th of July would be just a barbecue, Thanksgiving would be just a dinner and the Super Bowl would be just a crappy football game.
