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Super Bowl is a Rumpelstiltskin story
Posted: Friday January 28, 2000 11:03 AM
We talk about certain places and industries as being recession-proof. This year we will, evidently, find out if the Super Bowl is dispassion-proof. Never have two teams of such lackluster attraction been pitted against each other in the big game. Neither does any team boast a certified big-name star. Where did these people in shoulder pads come from? Obviously, since both teams are up from anonymity, they do not lack for Cinderella stories -- and, Lord, do we sportswriters love Cinderella stories. But the trouble is, both St. Louis and Tennessee are Cinderella stories, and how can you get excited when it is Cinderella 1 vs. Cinderella 1A? There's no mean stepmother here, no ugly stepsisters. This Super Bowl isn't a Cinderella story. It's a Rumpelstiltskin story -- nobody knows the names of any of the players or the teams or ... egad! Not only that, but we are assured that this year's Super Bowl program will be jammed with commercials about unknown dot-com companies desperately trying to establish identity. Bad enough we've got two teams who are unknown. We've also got mystery sponsors. By the end of the game, we should all be yearning for the good, old Super Sundays of yore when familiar beer bottles played football against each other and they shot bullets into that sturdy Master Lock. But maybe we will find out it really doesn't matter. Super Sunday appears to have become another major secular holiday. It lacks only Valentine-type cards -- To my favorite nephew on this, his most important day -- and special holiday colors, like July 4th has red, white and blue and Christmas is red and green. I suggest purple and gold -- for royalty and money. Every year, everything Super Bowl should be purple and gold. And what a shame that Irving Berlin, he who wrote both White Christmas and Easter Parade, died before he could write a quasi-sacred Super Bowl anthem. The Super Bowl needs all the fixings that other major holidays enjoy. Certainly, there should be a distinct Super Bowl food -- as Thanksgiving has turkey and Halloween has candy corn.
But most important, maybe it is good that the Super Bowl invariably has awful games or -- this year -- unrecognizable teams and players. Super Sunday is a convivial holiday, when Americans of all genders and generations come together as one. And, you see, if we care about the game we're less inclined to enjoy one another's company. Holidays can be tough. There's such tremendous pressure on us to like them so much, to get all the right Christmas presents and to cheerfully put up with all those dreadful relatives who come for Thanksgiving dinner. It was especially tough this year because we were absolutely required to have a ball on the New Millennium Eve. We're taught that holidays are supposed to be perfect, and if they're not, for us, we feel as if we've failed. The wonderful thing about Super Sunday is that it is the one honest holiday when we are allowed to grouse and complain. God, this is an awful game! This is so boring! And this year, with the two anonymous teams, we have license to start bitching even before the game gets lousy and lopsided. Thank you, Titans; thank you, Rams;thank you, two Rumpelstiltskins, for giving us a holiday that all real Americans can love. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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