Tomorrow Is The Superbowl, and I Couldn't Care Less

It's not that I'm unmanly and not a sports guy. I read every word in three papers and four blogs about the Oregon Ducks, I break open Rob Moseley's Oregon Duck Football blog far more often than I do my Bible (what does that say about me?) but I'm proud to say that this year I haven't watched a down of the NFL, except for the snatches of plays that catch me captive on the overhead tv monitors at the gym.

I'll glance at the scores in the paper, or scan the headlines on the front page of ESPN.com, just enough to know the latest twist and turn in the Brett Favre soap opera (chucked another heartbreaking interception in the critical moment of the NFC championship game, playing will-he-or-won't-he with his teammates and the press in his annual effort to gain attention and avoid minicamp) and that the Saints shook off forty years of failure to grab a shot at Superbowl glory, while Peyton Manning stands poised to cement his legacy as one of the all-time greats with a second ring. I know these things. I just don't care.

To me the NFL is prepackaged football. It's a four-hour Coors beer ad wrapped around a Las Vegas floor show, blood and mayhem and posturing. All the players are juiced and everyone knows it. The linebackers are athletically gifted psychopaths and the wide receivers are sexual predators rich enough to hire expensive lawyers and buy off their victims. It's sordid, cheap and flashy, just like Vegas itself, and the Super Bowl is the most bloated and over promoted event in American culture. Most of the games have been a flat bore, the food is a densely caloric nutritional train wreck, and the halftime shows have been embarrassing. Fifteen minutes of lip-synched geezer rock. Mick Jagger looking like a pickled teenaged girl in reverse drag, strutting around an exploding Liberace stage singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" at 62. There's nothing satisfying about the Superbowl. It's a 4000 calorie meal with no flavor, just a lot of fat and salt. Who are they trotting out this year? The Who? Perfect.

Everyone makes a big deal about the Superbowl commercials. What does it say about us that on Monday morning people will have all these earnest conversations about beer ads and a cute talking puppy dog trying to sell us something? The most creative minds in America devote millions of dollars to devise new ways to sell soda or a video game. Dude, where's my country? One point five million children are sleeping in cars or under bridges. Sixteen year old kids can't read or do basic math or execute a grocery list, and we want to sell them better video games? Who's in charge here?

Go ahead and watch the Superbowl, but it's four hours of your life you'll never get back. It's another season where nothing really happened, where large and grossly overpaid genetic freaks smashed into each other for no worthwhile purpose, where every video shot and breathless color commentary has been done a dozen times before. There's nothing new in the NFL. It's just bigger and faster and louder, like the newest video game. Peyton Manning and the Colts will win by twelve, but no one will remember three years from now without Google. I think I'll take a nap.