50 for 50: A so-called life of watching the Super Bowl
Reflections on a lifetime of watching every Super Bowl.
On Jan. 15, 1967, I was just a few days away from my 8th birthday. We'd just moved into Don Draper's neighborhood (although I didn't know it at the time, maybe because Don Draper is fictional) of Chilmark in New York's northern suburbs, with a dank family room and a fairly newfangled color TV. I could probably count on one had the sporting events I'd ever watched, as it had been just that fall that my Midwestern-raised dad had been turned on by a friend to the NFL's Giants. But something told me that I should check out this thing that was called, by some, the Super Bowl. Maybe because the name sounded like a favorite toy, my Super Ball.
By the next year, I was pretty much hooked on sports, so it's really no surprise that -- through a lifetime of many ups and downs -- I've positioned myself, wherever I was, on my 9-inch black and white TV in college or even on my computer while I worked, ahem, the Sunday night shift at the paper, to watch all 50 Super Bowls. Tonight's Super Bowl 50 was...well, it was the dullest one I've seen since the routs of the 1980s and '90s. But the game was marked by the usual helmet-crunching, CTE-causing violence, four hours of relentless capitalism (capped by the winning quarterback making his post-game remarks a product placement for Budweiser, after kissing the actual Papa John), and of course "honoring America" out the wazoo.
It was the USA...love it or leave it. I hope I live to see 50 more Super Bowls, or see the Philadelphia Eagles win just one. Both of those things seem highly unlikely.
Oh year, Denver won. Talk about the Big Game, or talk about Marco Rubio's Big Chokle in the GOP debate. Normal blogging resumes tomorrow.
