The Day We Stop To Watch Super Bowl Seemingly Stalls U.S. For A While

Some players try to shrug it off as just another game and then they stand on the sidelines in the moments before the Super Bowl, helmets in hand, and listen to the national anthem and tears run down their faces.

Some players say they shut out everything before the game, don’t remember much that went on, but former Dallas Cowboys tackle Randy White said, “Going through the runway and walking out onto the field, I felt like I had wings on and could fly.”

Some fans - lots - complain that it’s always a bad game and swear they’re not going to watch, and then they stock up on beer and chips and guacamole, turn on the TV and watch, as do hundreds of millions.

The Super Bowl matters. No matter what anybody says, it matters. And no matter what anybody says, it is good.

Often times the games have turned out to be bad but the event itself is fascinating. It’s our biggest, flashiest sports spectacular, but it’s more than sports. It has the football with its championship trophy named for Vince Lombardi to appeal to the serious fan but it also has a kind of Hollywood glitter to it to appeal to people who haven’t watched a game all season.

And that’s good. In today’s world, it borders on being phenomenal, that something so innocent could bind and spellbind us for a while.

One Sunday in January every year, the country shuts down for a few hours while we watch to see if Joe Namath can fulfill his guarantee or if Roger Staubach can outduel Bob Griese or if Dan Marino is a match for Joe Montana or if Green Bay can return to the glory days of Lombardi or if John Elway, bless his heart, can finally get a ring.

Today, we get Super Bowl XXXII. Denver against defending champion Green Bay in San Diego. As always, we’ve chewed over all the reasons the Packers will win or the Broncos will win, argued Elway vs. Favre, covered it all. We care. We wait.

What is it about this event that has made it one of the highest rated shows in TV history year after year? Well, it has glamour. We read and hear that TV and movie stars and sports stars and other famous people are partying in the host city. We hear Whitney Houston sing the national anthem and see Michael Jackson dance at halftime. It’s show biz. If they care, we have to care, don’t we?

But there is also the football lore, great players, great coaches, great teams, and also:

Green Bay’s Max McGee staying out all night partying before Super Bowl I, assuming he wouldn’t play much if any because he was a sub, but being pressed into service because of an injury and making the first reception ever for a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

And there was Broadway Joe Namath guaranteeing a win for the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts.

There was the Raiders’ John Matuszak breaking curfew in New Orleans to stand on a balcony on Bourbon Street and dance and yell at the crowds below, which one of his teammates explained away by saying, “Big Tooz always goes out on Wednesday night.”

There was Dallas’ Hollywood Henderson saying Pittsburgh QB Terry Bradshaw was so dumb “He couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the C and the A.”

And Jim McMahon mooning a TV helicopter hovering over the Bears’ practice and also being falsely accused of defaming all New Orleans women.

And, well, there’s more, equally silly, insignificant except in one way - it helped to grab our attention, amuse us, give faces and personalities to those guys who would be masked and armored on Sunday.

It made us care about a football game.

Who’s bringing the guac?