SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like football as much as the next guy—probably more than the average fan, in fact. I covered my college team for the school newspaper, and still follow them with some fervor. And, being that my best friend in high school’s father worked for the Chicago Bears, I got tickets to games and other assorted ephermera (on which I will elaborate later).

Walter Payton, the late, great Bears running back, is one of my few true sports heroes. I can name the starting lineup of the 1985 Bears, which was one of the greatest NFL teams ever. Some of my fondest memories have to do with football.

So it is not the game of professional football I hold a brief. It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today’s SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! leaves me flat, unmoved, uncaring. For it is no longer a football game, no longer a bunch of oversized men headed for multiple joint replacements slamming into each other. It is our own secular holiday. It is the most-watched, most-advertised event in the United States, making the ratings for Obama’s election and inauguration look like a 3 a.m. weight-loss infomercial.

It is a the source of parties, celebration, sorrow.

It is the pinnacle of human achievement.

It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

say it again, with feeling:

SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I have a specific image in mind for this. A muscled, bare-chested man, arms raised to the sky, beseeching the gods to grant the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to mortals. Kind of like Achilles’ screaming at Zeus, or me screaming at my computer when eats a document, minus the muscles and bare chest .)

Now, this is not to judge those of you attending pre-game parties, watching the game for the commercials, football fans interested in the game, or if you are actually a Pittsburgh or Arizona fan. Nor any of you to watch the post-modern "bowl within a bowl" like Bud Bowl, Lingerie Bowl, Puppy Bowl, or Heroin Bowl. Have fun, get drunk, don’t make a pass at your boss’s wife.

That kind of minor innocence is lost on the legion of sportswriters, TV "analysts," programming executives, and any other person with a stake in promoting damn thing. There have been millions of words spilled about the game, both in print and television, micro-analyzing something worth about 10 minutes of pregame.

For it is then it morphs from merely a big game to SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hype isn’t even the right word for it: deification is more like it.

If you ever think that some people do not take this seriously, I submit to you the following:

I don’t know what is worse: this fan’s bathetic response to the collapse of his beloved Giants, or his unfortunate resemblance to Jonah Hill.

OK, OK, enough of the post-modernist, pseudo-intellectual, uninteresting blather. Here’s the real reason I’m writing this: Pat Summerall, and an incident that illustrates this hot, overhyped mess much better than my hot, overhyped hyperventilating.

For those of you too young or unlikely to have seen Summerall, he is an ex-player who was an NFL sports announcer for CBS and FOX for years, having reached some modicum of fame, particularly with his work with John Madden. Summerall was known for his laconic, terse delivery: "Montana drops back in the pocket…to Rice…touchdown 49ers." He had the type of voice that lent itself to this kind of thing, and was actually quite good at it.

In any case, because of my best friend’s father, I was able to attend the NFC Championship game the year of the glorious ’85 Bears. As part of the package, I got to attend an NFL party the evening before. It was quite the swank affair, with a band, open bar, ice sculptures. Impressive to a college kid like myself.

Among the luminaries attending the party were Pete Rozell, the NFL commissioner, Madden, and Summerall, who would call the game the next afternoon. It was January in Chicago, and the forecast for the next day’s game was well below freezing. But Summerall was dressed like his name dictated the weather: lemon khakis, a white buttondown shirt with open collar, and a cream sportsjacket with thick green tartan stripes. It was as if he were stuck in 1974, about to step on a plane to Bermuda.

I approached Summerall, thinking, what the hell, this guy’s famous, he’s by himself, why not chat him up? Standing alone, Summerall was holding a drink of an amber hue and staring at the scene between sips. I introduced myself, and said I was the guest of B_____. Summerall glanced at me, nodding slightly, saying nothing. My friend’s father had been a sportswriter in a prior life, and I said I was thinking about becoming one professionally as well. I said that B_______ was kind of a role model.

Summerall: You too

This seemed to stir Summerall, for he looked at me with heroic intent. There was no gleam in his eye, nothing but stoic earnestness. He then turned away and stared into the distance. 

"If you follow B_______’s footsteps," he said, "you too will be a champion."

And then he walked away to refresh his drink, his tartan sportsjacket flapping in his wake.

Those were the only words Pat Summerall said to me. It was the greatest, weirdest moment of my life. So as you plunge your chip into your salsa, slam down your eighth beer, or begin to cry like Jonah Hill above, remember to follow B______’s footsteps. You too, will be a champion.