A Contrary Opinion

January 23, 2001

As “Super Bowl Sunday” nears, the Tampa TV stations are fully participating in the “hype” that leads up to this national event. “Panel Talk” of the Home Testing Institute prints this:

Super Bowl

“Over 800 million people in 188 countries across the world, including some 130 million in the U.S. will watch the Super Bowl on TV this January. Many of these people, however, will wish they were at the game instead. That's a big change from the first Super Bowl back in 1967. For that contest, only 61,946 people attended, leaving more than 30,000 seats empty in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Even more amazing is the fact that tickets to that game would have cost you a mere $6 - $12 dollars. The lowest face value on a ticket to last year’s game was $325. Advertising expenses have changed too. A 30-second commercial in 1967 cost $42,000, whereas last year, the same length commercial ran $2.2 million. The Super Bowl has grown in other ways as well. It is now the second largest day of food consumption in the U.S.”

Shakespeare has Trincolo say in THE TEMPEST, Act II, sc. ii,

“I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer.”

I no longer watch professional football on TV. The game has become ritualized old hat as far as I am concerned. (Now there is a real slander on The American Way of Life.) I am reading a most enlightening biography, THE FIRST AMERICAN – The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by H. W. Brands. To me, that is a more interesting way to spend Sunday evening, January 28. I am a heretic in many other ways, too.

But I wonder why the Super Bowl is the second largest day of food consumption in the U. S. Why must one eat up the deli plate, chow down the hot dogs, grab handfuls of Buffalo wings and gulp six-packs of beer because 22 men are kicking, passing, tackling, blocking, dancing on the TV? Sooner or later, some psychologist or sociologist will write an essay on that and maybe satisfy my curiosity.

The Talking Heads on the tube gloat in the 250 million dollar impact that the Super Bowl will have on the Tampa economy. OK, I can understand that. But in January of any year the hotel/motel/restaurants that the football fans are occupying in January 2001 would be filled by persons coming to the Gulf Coast of Florida for the warmth, sunshine, and beaches.

Maybe [the] Super Bowl is the modern replay of the Roman Saturnalia with all its excesses.