Sentimentality and the Super Bowl

 

Watching this year's version of the spectacle called the Super Bowl, I was struck by how sentimental it's become.  It has been for some time, I think, but this year was the first time I felt that it was so self-consciously sentimental as to seem contrived.  Indeed, even silly.

As I listened while the Battle of Iwo Jima, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first landing on the moon, the first flight of a manned aircraft, the march on Washington led by Martin Luther King and other great events were solemnly invoked, I couldn't help but reflect on the fact they were being invoked in connection with nothing more than a football game.  

It's preposterous to compare a football game to such events. It's absurd to claim that those who play in or watch that game are in any respect comparable to those who participated in those great events or achieve anything as significant as what they achieved. I don't care how well the game is played or how much money it cost to watch it in person.

The game and the seemingly endless pregame and halftime performances and football related musings of former players make up a spectacle, of course.  But even when the game takes place in a stadium bearing the name Caesar it doesn't compare with the spectacles which took place when real Caesars ruled and gladiatorial contests, beast fights and chariot races took place over many days, and not just a few hours, to mark a triumph or death or event. From a historical perspective, the Super Bowl isn't even that great of a spectacle let alone an event of the kind reverently noted before it was played.

Why, then, do we proclaim it's significance and greatness in such a histrionic manner as to become ridiculous? We don't seem to understand that by doing so we appear pathetic.  It's true that we live in an age where superlatives are regularly employed to describe anything, no matter how insignificant it may be, as the best or the worst thing in history.  Few may notice how amusing a propensity this is; there are indeed suckers born every minute.  Suckers are maudlin as well as gullible.

I enjoy watching the Super Bowl, typically.  That's because I enjoy watching football, though.  I don't think it has anything to do with great deeds performed by Americans in the past.  I don't think there's anything particularly laudable about extremely well paid athletes playing a game which can sometimes result in injury.  I understand we have a tendency to glorify great athletes.  We've always done this.  We are inclined in these sad times to misuse the word "hero"; I think because there are far fewer of them, just as there are far fewer great events taking place in a world where making money is the only perceived purpose of life.

But invoking the courage and sacrifice of those who fought in Iwo Jima in connection with the Super Bowl?  Really?