What I Take Away From The Super Bowl
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Football — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The 2007-2008 New England Patriots ended up with the same record as the 1985-1986 Chicago Bears.
And unlike the Patriots, the Bears won the Super Bowl.
And curiously enough, the Bears did it by beating the Patriots.
I love football. Also, I should go buy lottery tickets, or something.
Sports commentators have to be getting tired of telling the 'story' of the Super Bowl for two weeks. Setting up the game as a drama with all the hallmarks of a made-for-TV movie tends to lead viewers to think they've seen this game even before its broadcast.
Broadcasters, analysts and talking heads use tropes and comfortable cliches to frame the Super Bowl as a story we can all easily digest. The problem with doing this for weeks before the game is played is viewers start to feel like we've already seen the game because we know the story. At least we fee like we know the plot, the characters and how it's suppose to end.
The sports media banter about because they have little time or intelligence for real analysis. Instead, 'banalysis' rules the airwaves.
Well, going into the 3rd quarter, this game had the feel of any other Super Bowl complete with hyerbole from anyone with a microphone, over-the-top commercials, a 'spectacular' half-time show and dramatic music. It was in short, entertainment as a whole but not delivering any competitiveness that could thwart the storyline of a typical Super Bowl. The game was the part between the affects and masturbatory marketing.
Not until the final minutes of this game did we, and the broadcasters, realize we had not seen this game before. The cast of players threw away the script.
Didn't Manning know to go down instead of fight off defenders so that NFL history could crown its heir apparent?
No, and thank goodness. Without the last two minutes of Super Bowl XLII, sports fans might continue to suffer from unchecked hyperbole.
This ending should be a lesson to those trying to turn, or continually turning, sports into entertainment.
Last night's game could do for sports broadcasting what Usual Suspects did for movies - allow studios to provide entertainment that allows the viewers to draw conclusions of their own. Allow viewers to tell themselves the story WHILE the game is in process. It wipes away the somatic drama viewer are fed, which turns the game into a component of the overall drama rather than the reason for the pageantry and drama.