The 13 Hour Superbowl

Well, we've managed to get through another Superbowl game. With all of the hype it is almost shocking a game is actually played. The Steelers took this Superbowl and go home happy. For the rest of us, well, it is simply the end of the football season.

The Superbowl has now become a soap opera. The incredible hype to this game is truly comical. The "pre-game" shows now come on before other pre-game shows. The "fun" on the day of the game starts around nine in the moing with discussions about the game and old films from previous games. This works its way right up into about six-thirty PM!! Talk about needing to take your vitamins for stamina.

Perhaps it is just age but it appears these games are getting more and more boring. If there were not so much gambling, drinking and eating involved, a good movie could compete against it. Let's face it: The Superbowl has become St. Patrick's Day and New Year's rapped up in to one. Many people will skip work the following day due to progressive hangovers or bad digestive systems after the buffalo wings, beer and pizza. Many reports have shown lost worker productivity the following day of the game. I miss the "good ole days" when there were one or two hours of pre-game hype and then the game would just start. Do we really need players from every other generation walking onto the field as the names are read off like a school list before the game? Do we really need rock concerts at half-time? At this point a dog going after a frisbee for fifteen minutes looks better.

Of course, the National Football League dabbles with racial issues as well which are cumbersome to say the least. A commemoration for Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, is understandable. But was showing Rosa Parks, a woman who passed on three and a half months ago, really necessary outside of racial pandering? The NFL should not be in this business at all. In the end it is still a league based on guys throwing or running with a ball and hitting each other; not taking on racial issues.

In a couple of months most people will be hard pressed to even remember who played in this Superbowl. Hell, if it were not for the beer and good food, a good book is sounding like a better option more and more.

Robert Carberry is a freelance writer from New York.