Ruminations of an Old Goat

I'm writing this on Super Bowl Sunday, the closest thing the U.S. has to a national sports holiday. The game won't be played for several hours, so I'll have to add an update some time late tonight or early Monday morning if I want to mention the results. But right now I'm thinking about how this once-a-year football game worked its way into American culture so quickly.

The first Super Bowl was played during my lifetime. At the time, it was called it the World Championship Game, playing off of baseball's very popular World Series. I was nine and even watched the game. I don't really remember the game, but I know I watched it because the Green Bay Packers won the game. I was a die-hard Packers fan at the time, having a Packers poster on the wall in my room and an autographed photo of Green Bay's quarterback, Bart Starr. (Back in the '60s, you could get an autographed photo of a player by simply writing to the team and requesting one. You didn't even have to pay for shipping. Somehow, I doubt that would work these days.)

That first game proved successful enough that another game was scheduled for the following year. The Packers won that game, too, though I have only fleeting memories of that game as well. I have far better memories of Bart Starr sneaking across for the winning touchdown in the NFL Championship game against Dallas. But with the success of the first two games, the game seemed destined to be an annual event.

While the second Super Bowl was a success, the results were exactly as everyone in the sports world expected. The long-established NFL champion took the upstart AFL champion out to the wood shed and taught them to respect their betters. For you young'uns, when the Super Bowl began, it was played between teams from two totally different leagues; the National Football League, formed in 1920, and the American Football League, formed in 1960. In the minds of many observers, the AFL was a second-rate league whose teams had no business being on the same field with the venerable NFL teams.

Super Bowl III could arguably be called the most important single game in the history of professional football (American football, for any international readers). Sports historians generally say the 1958 NFL championship, the first nationally televised professional football game and the first to require overtime to determine the champion, was the most important. I was one year old at the time, so I can't say I watched it. But I watched Super Bowl III, featuring the power house Baltimore Colts against the upstart New York Jets. In its own way, this game mirrored the cultural backdrop of the times. Played in early 1969, the story of the game was the story in the news every night, with the aging Baltimore Colts taking the part of the establishment and the young, hip New York Jets taking the part of the brash youth.

The Packers' lopsided victories in the first two championship games, combined with a dominating season from the Colts, let to predictions that the Colts would score at will, including some suggesting they might score 70 points or more. Joe Namath, quarterback for the Jets, played the role of "brash youth" perfectly by guaranteeing a victory for the Jets. It's been forty-one years since this game was played, yet I still remember all of the hype and build-up, the claims and counter-claims, Namath's brash pronouncements and the mocking tones in which those pronouncements were reported. The game cut across generational lines, as well. Every father in the neighborhood was pulling for the Colts. All of us kids were pulling for the Jets.

With hype of that level, the game could easily have been a dud. It wasn't. At least not for my friends and me. When the clock ran out on the game, Joe Namath had delivered; Jets 16 - Colts 7. The upset of the century had taken place on the biggest stage professional football had to offer. After just three years, the Super Bowl was cemented as the game to watch.

Today's Super Bowl will be the forth-fourth played and the thirty-ninth I'll have watched. I'll pull for the Saints but I won't be upset if the Colts win. I'll hope for some really good commercials. And tomorrow I'll do the same thing fans every where will do. I'll hope that next year my team will make it to the Super Bowl.

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Monday morning...

Watching the Super Bowl last night served as a solid reminder, had I been able to forget, that the Boy is now a teenager. For a kid who had never watched an entire Super Bowl before last night, he displayed extreme confidence in his "knowledge" of football strategy and history. I wonder how many years must pass before he is willing to admit I'm not a complete idiot? Fortunately, I do remember being a teenager and know I did the same thing to my father. It doesn't make it any easier taking the role of family idiot, but I'm comfortable knowing it's payback I earned long ago.

As far as the Super Bowl goes, the commercials were disappointing but the game was not. Football fans were treated to a hard fought, back-and-forth game that wasn't sealed until Colts failed to score on fourth and goal with less than a minute to play. For a team many people wrote off after they lost the last three games of the regular season, the Saints proved the first thirteen games were no fluke. So many of the Saints key players are young enough that I expect the team to be in the Super Bowl hunt for years to come.

The less said about the commercials, especially those of the "buy our product and restore your manhood" variety, the better.