After the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, I left the neighbors’ house and went home. Again. I almost always leave the big game before it’s over. If I even watch it. Last year I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and happened to be passing through a bar where Super Bowl XLVI was on the TV, allowing me to witness the last 50 seconds of the game. So I guess I was counted as among the estimated 111 million people who watched that one.
Monday morning, I read that the Baltimore Ravens had beaten the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 in Super Bowl XLVII, a last-second thriller. Further analysis over the following days reveals that it was the No. 1-watched TV show in America for the week, seen by 108 million people. No. 2 was the 106 million people who watched the half-hour Super Dome Blackout. That must have been one very compelling darkened room.
Most of my friends are likely not surprised by my ambivalence – actually, let’s call it disdain – for the Super Bowl. They know I am a cynic, but most of them are also likely unaware that I was once a sportswriter and editor. I did that for a dozen years, more than two decades ago. Which does not, by any means, qualify me as a sports expert. What it does mean, however, is that I have a highly evolved bullshit detector when it comes to these events.
I’ve learned to pay only inadvertent attention to the hours leading up to the game, when the sports networks air hours of soft-focus, journalistically useless profiles on the athletes and coaches. Sunday, I shook my head in disbelief when all five TV analysts for the game, sitting behind their semicircle desk, were sporting American flag pins at precisely the same spot on the lapel of their sports jackets, as though placed there by an intern, perhaps under orders from a producer – who was likely not wearing an American flag pin himself – to subtly remind viewers that this is a Great American Event. Or perhaps a Republican presidential primary debate.
There were five major, relentless story lines to Super Bowl XLVII, and the national sports media didn’t get any of them correct.
Story line No. 1: The Harbaugh brothers. Brother John coaches the Ravens, younger brother Jim coaches the 49ers. Nothing against the brothers’ success, which may be well deserved from their end of things. But what does it mean that two guys born 15 months apart of the same parents each lands one of only 30 head-coaching positions in the NFL? It means the league hiring process is a private club. An old-boys network. Genetics doesn’t make NFL coaches, opportunity does. There’s some kind of gate-keeping mechanism at work. It’s likely not entirely race based, but that’s still gotta be a factor. Since the regular season ended, there have been 15 vacancies in top team positions – eight head coaching jobs and seven general manager positions. All were filled by white candidates. That’s in a league where 67 percent of the players are African-American.
Story Line No. 2: Ray Lewis. This was the final game in the linebacker’s career. Next stop, the Hall of Fame. That’s always feel-good story. But not to the families of the two men stabbed to death in 2000 after a party at a bar. Lewis was among those arrested that night. It was established in court that he had lied to the cops, and the white suit that he was wearing that night was never found. Lewis pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice and testified against two of his friends, who were acquitted. The crime did follow Lewis at a distance through the Super Bowl. Yet it did not obstruct the adulation showered on this man who was celebrated as an example of NFL toughness, but who has never answered disturbing questions about a double murder. Former NFL star Sterling Sharpe, once a teammate of Lewis, was assigned the key pre-game interview. Sharpe produced the predictably soft-focus, journalistically useless piffle. When he asked Lewis what the families of the two dead men should think about the acclaim that Lewis has received, the linebacker said something that should have made a journalist’s red flags fly:
“It’s simple, you know. God has never made a mistake. That’s just who He is, you see? And if our system — this is the sad thing about our system — if our system took the time to really investigate what happened 13 years ago, maybe they would have got to the bottom-line truth. But the saddest thing ever was that a man looked me in my face and told me, ‘We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.’ To the family, if you knew — if you really knew — the way God works, He don’t use people who commits anything like that for His glory. No way. It’s the total opposite.”
In other words, Lewis’ success means God has judged him innocent. Sharpe said nothing of this logic, nor did he follow up on the identity of the mysterious guy who supposedly told Lewis, “We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.”
Story line No. 3: San Francisco second-string quarterback Alex Smith was praised for the graceful way in which he handling losing his starting job to his backup, Colin Kaepernick, who looks like a star in the making. Yet Smith was having a fine season himself when forced to the sideline at mid-season after suffering an injury. That injury was the real third big story: NFL concussions.
For years, the NFL has not acknowledged the escalating evidence that players are suffering concussions at a frightening rate, resulting in damage to the brain. Consider the recent suicides of two heralded NFL defensive players, Dave Duerson and Junior Seau. In 2012, both men thoughtfully shot themselves to death with bullets to the chest, and I do not write that line lightly. It was a decision allowing for their brains to be autopsied. In Duerson’s case, he specifically texted his family before shooting himself, asking that his brain be examined. Both men’s autopsies revealed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease brought on by repeated blows to the head. In fact, a recent study of the brains of 34 deceased NFL players showed that 33 of them had CTE.
The phrase “sports teaches good character” is obsolete. These games breed bad character and violence, and the NFL sells it. Nearly every play was followed by a player shoving or taking a swing at an opp0ntent. After a Kaepernick pass was intercepted, one of the Ravens pushed an official. “Did that guy just push an official?” asked the guy sitting on the couch next to me. “I think so,” I said. That should have been an automatic ejection for cornerback Cary Williams. Instead, unnecessary roughness penalties were called on San Francisco’s Joe Staley and Baltimore’s Corey Graham; pointless penalties, because they cancelled out each other. Williams remained in the game, as though the officials hadn’t seen what he’d done. But I’m relatively sure the official who was pushed noticed it. The game appeared to be completely out of control.
Story line No. 4: The halftime show. Praised as “electric” by overnight critics, I’ll give you my professional, music critic’s opinion. Beyoncé is charming and has a big voice, but the performance was flat, rushed and overwhelmed by a pyrotechnics-loaded budget. There were no emotional highs and lows, just huge flashing lights. Even Beyoncé re-uniting with her Destiny’s Child pals inspired no heart flutters. The most emotional moment was 26 kids from Sandy Hook Elementary School singing “America the Beautiful.” Twenty-six kids, representing the 26 first graders and adults killed in December’s tragedy in Newton, Conn. It was truly a heartfelt moment. But rather than allow the children to bring the song to its subtle conclusion, and allow 108 million people to ponder for a few thoughtful seconds what it all means, Jennifer Hudson was brought out in full diva-howl mode, stepping all over the moment.
U2 did it right at the 2002 Super Bowl. Just months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the band closed its performance with “Where the Streets Have No Name,” as the names of the victims scrolled upward, across a towering backdrop behind them, into the heavens.
Story line No. 5: No media outlet’s coverage of the Super Bowl is complete without an analysis of the commercials. That would have read like a joke back in the days of Vince Lombardi’s Packers winning the first two Super Bowls, but now the commercials are a much-anticipated event in and of themselves. Sunday’s were generally deemed a letdown. I personally found it offensive to combine heartfelt images of American soldiers juxtaposed with artsy shots of Jeeps. Patriotism = Buy a Jeep? Really?
Other lesser story lines were ignored. How about the legacy this particular game owed to the city of Cleveland, which had its team hijacked by owner Art Modell and moved to Baltimore. No disrespect meant to Cleveland’s loyal, intense, supportive fans. But it was the money, you know….
It’s been scientifically proven that spending eight hours every Sunday during the NFL season, sprawled on your couch watching games, is a drain on your sperm count.
