Super Bowl L: Panthers v. Broncos

Go ahead, watch them die: F**k those joyless moralists who hate football and the Super Bowl
by Steve Almond, Salon
Thursday, Feb 4, 2016 05:59 PM EST

Super Bowl (Pretentious Roman Numeral 50) is upon us, America! Let us give thanks to the Gods of the Gridiron for our biggest and brightest holy day! Let us sit in thrall of ornate and savage beauty! Let us watch Cam Newton run wild like some brilliantly branded Caliban! Let us pray that Peyton Manning’s arm remains attached to the rest of his body, at least until the third quarter! Let us praise the cleverness of the sponsors! Let us consume processed foodstuffs until farts explode from our lucky bottoms!

I kid, of course. But only because I care.

The Super Bowl, after all, offers those of us who are hung up on football the chance to take part in the world’s largest tribal pop shot. Half of our adult population will watch the game. Trillions of dollars will be won and lost. Billions of otherwise billable hours will be wiled away on postmortems. Americans will be provided, if only for 24 sweet hours, a spectacle more triumphant and diverting than Donald Trump’s hair.

The problem—and isn’t there always some problem where pleasure is concerned?—is that a bunch of self-righteous ninnies are going to try to make us feel guilty for watching the Super Bowl.

And why?

Because, they say, the game is “dangerous.”

Yeah, well, so is being a construction worker! Or a cop! Or a mountain climber! So why not ban those things, huh? Plus the players get paid a fortune! They’re adults! They know the risks! At least they do now.

Seriously. Why is everyone picking on football? Why is the liberal media parading all these dead, demented former players around? People get dementia and die all the time. You don’t see them parading around dead insurance agents.

You know what it is? It’s depressing.
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These media elites are trying to brainwash you into believing that every single football player gets brain damage, which is capital B Bullshit. The percentage of former NFL players who get brain damage is 30 percent—tops.
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But what I really want to know is, what about the other 70 percent, huh? How come you never hear about the guys who turn out just fine? Guys who never would have had a chance to make it out of the ghetto and thanks to football they’re rich and famous and playing in celebrity golf tournaments? How come nobody ever tells that story?

I’ll tell you why. Because there’s a whole conspiracy out there of doctors and reporters and authors who are making a fortune off this concussion panic. It’s a whole industry now. Just like with climate change.

The goal is to try to make people feel evil for taking pleasure in life, like me sitting there watching the Super Bowl is somehow to blame for the fact that Kenny Stabler’s brain looked like Swiss cheese when he died.
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Plus, the NFL has totally changed the rules. The guys on defense can’t even deliver a decent shot anymore without the league throwing a hissy fit. The sport is already totally wussed out compared to the old days.

But here’s what all these naysayers keep forgetting: America has become the greatest nation on the face of the earth because we believe in liberty. And liberty boils down to free will.
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Americans can think for themselves and make up their own minds about what to watch. We don’t need a bunch of benchwarmers trying to smear the game every time some player rapes a woman or beats his kid. Newsflash: Women get raped all the time and kids get abused. Stop blaming football for society’s problems! Stop telling us we’re stupid and evil for loving America’s favorite sport.

Stop venting your snobbery in the form of weasely questions about whether “it’s ethical to consume as entertainment a sport so violent it causes brain damage.”
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Because in the end, football is just a game. That’s my whole point. Football is just a game. The Super Bowl is just a game, all the hoopla aside. It brings a lot of joy and meaning to hundreds of millions of Americans. If a few players wind up a little confused later in life, it’s fine to feel bad for them and their loved ones and all that. But let’s not lose sight of what really matters.

Just in case you can’t be bothered to click through, Steve Almond’s book is titled Against Football, that’s what makes this funny and ironic.

Romans watched people die in Stadiums, why should we think we’re any different? Because we’re not lead poisoned imperialists? Do you think the people of Flint would agree with that assessment?

Oh, you want to know about the game. The young Black Guy beats the aging White Guy who was entirely overrated to begin with and is now waaay less good than that.

Wait, you believe in comebacks and redemption? Pitchers and Catchers don’t report for a week. There is absolutely no reason the Panthers after their near perfect season don’t crush the Broncos like bugs. When the first quarter is finished I may stop live blogging because the game will just be a painful bore.

And that’s the thing about Throwball, some folks find Baseball tedious because they’re not willing to concentrate for 3 or 4 hours but I think there is much less happening between the yard lines than there is on the diamond. Did you ever notice how rarely teams change their game plans based on their perfomance, how the Quarterback never looks past his first or second choice receiver? It’s like watching Turn Left Racing and unfortunately I suspect that it says volumes about our national character that our 2 most watched sports are this violent and otherwise uninteresting. I mostly use Throwball as a sleep aid.

Out of the 49 Super Bowls played a handful have been less than blowouts of epic proportion and there is more entertainment value in the ads than the on field action.

My therapist likes the Broncos over the Panthers for some reason, perhaps a scandal I’m too lazy to chase down because they are just so common. I never watch or follow the game unless it’s the Packers and after the Series. I have no dog in this fight (indeed more emotional connection to the Puppy and Kittie Bowls). They generally rational (though they are Skinnerian and I think my neurosis is more Freudian. No couch! What up with that?) and is likewise a Packers fan so you may wish to take that under advisement if you need encouragement about the Ponies.

If on the other hand you want to engage in debate about Beyonce and Coldplay there is plenty of room below.

CBS, 6:30 pm ET.