Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The Super Bowl: Are you excited?

A professional football game will be played on Sunday, the last one of the 2017-2018 season. It's called the "Super Bowl" and it will feature teams from Philadelphia and Boston (New England), the Eagles vs. The Patriots (-6  O/U 47.5) with a halftime show starring one Justin Timberlake.

It will be the most watched television event of the year.

And I could care less.

It's not that I dislike the two teams playing in the game, it's that I'm 100% ambivalent about both of them.

If Tom Brady and Bill Bellicheck win the game my excitement quotient will not be affected one iota. The same goes if the Eagles win. I don't care if the two teams play the most exciting NFL game EVER.

Because it will pale in comparison to Oklahoma v. Georgia in the Rose Bowl.

What the NFL has managed to do is suck all of the fun out of a fun game by attempting to micro-manage the game through perfect rule making, by removing the focus from the field, and by taking steps to rid the game of heroes and villains.  What the NFL has become is a faceless, gormless version of itself, dominated by a commissioner that no one likes, a style of play that rewards being too conservative and by courting a 'fan' base that could honestly care less.

It also hurts that they're playing in a stadium that has to be the early front-runner for worst translation of the atmosphere to television of them all.  Every game that I've seen played at the Wart (admit it, it looks like a wart) is overly dark, muted and joyless.  Even the College Football Playoff National Championship looked more at home in a funeral procession than in a championship game.  The lighting is terrible, the seats are too far away from the action and the 'roof' is a confusing morass of steel girders that looks like the opening for V-GER in the original Star Wars movie.

Anyone have any doubt that the commercials will suck?

As far as the game goes, I won't be playing much attention to it being played but here's how I see it.

Bellicheck and Brady will spend the first half figuring out what works, and then will execute a halftime plan just well enough to win the game. Gronkowski will be healthy and will play, and will present match-up nightmares for what is a pretty good Philly defense.

Prediction:  Philadelphia 21 New England 27.

In other words, I think the line is pretty close to correct and I wouldn't bet it either way.  You've just as good of odds betting on the coin flip.

Maybe halftime will be OK. I'll probably be tuned to another station shortly after that anyway.

The 2nd half commercials are never any good.

1 comment:

jason said...

The ending was exciting. The Eagles held on for the win, and they had the only takeaway, with a strip sack of Brady that allowed the Eagles to kick a field goal, which then required the Patriots to score a TD and 2 point conversion to tie the game for OT. I saw the ending because I was tuning in to watch This Is Us, which was after the game, but the game perhaps ran on for a while. I can't remember seeing any commercials, other than Mucinex! Most of the Super Bowl ads are dumb, and, even though you might remember the ad, you can't remember the product. In the old days products had a catchy jingle and that stuck in your head. Now, they have a funny spot, that says, there people who like a well shaken soda, who enjoy a paper cut on their tongue, etc. but I can't even tell you what they are selling.

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