Hey Brewer

One week ago, a football team from New York played a football team from New England in the final game of the 2007-2008 season, to determine the champion of the season.  The team from New York eventually won 17-14, and the game was watched by an ungodly number of individual Americans of which maybe 15% will vote in November if we are lucky.  Now, I’m not going to just deride my fellow Americans for being lazy couch-potatoes who are more interested in Super Bowl ads than national politics.  There’s more reasons to be apathetic about voting then just being an uncaring, ignorant lemming; it’s very possible that a voter actually might carefully weigh the platforms and positions of Hilary, Obama, McCain, Paul, Mary, and Joseph and decide not to vote for any of them.  It’s very possible to have your opinion about the Presidential election be, “No Opinion.”

What is impossible is to imagine that if you asked any one of the 97.4 million viewers of Super Bowl 42, they would say they had “No Opinion” on what they just watched.

Samplings might be in the range of something like: 

- Eff the Patriots.  I’m a hater.

- It’s fixed.

- Tom Petty is old.

- We whipped they bootay.

- Asante Samuel ruined my life by not catching that interception.

- Nobody commented on the guacamole I made for the party and I spent all day shucking avocadoes!!

- I like Tom Brady and he’s cute and he roxxors. 

The point is everyone has an opinion.  And here’s mine: That was a great game.

Sure, because of the rivalries, because of 18-1, because somehow I am OK with a world where the Mannings are back-to-back champs, because I get to watch Mercury Morris again from the golf course the next time a 10-0 team gets interviewed and I will get to watch him wax philosophically again, looking like the cover of that Frederick Douglass book I had to buy in college talking at me.  Tom Petty was great too, if only because the only true betting winner in our Super Bowl party was the guy who guessed that he would open with “American Girl” and end with “Running Down a Dream”.  I would call him lucky, but he predicted Prince would end last year’s Super Bowl with “Purple Rain”.  It’s uncanny.  He picked the year where the halftime show ended with a ballad, and he picked the year where the halftime show ended with a rocker.  Me, I’m just glad nobody’s titties popped out and caused a Moral Majority outcry, a subsequent religious right voter turnout, and now we’re thankfully going to be spared four more years of a pandering, ersatz evangelist like Mike Huckabee in office.<br><br>Anyway, sure because of all of that and the ads (which I’ve already completely forgotten, thank you alcohol and other toxins) 97.4 million viewers watched the Super Bowl, whether they give a damn about football or not.  Whether or not they can tell offsides from an offensive pass interference, they watched.  And I’m here to say, if you like sports, that was a hell of a game.  A low-scoring chess game of a match where the offense sputters not because they just inherently stink, like the Bears, but because the defenses on both sides were that much more overpowering.  And yet, with time running down, Eli Manning and the Giants offense combine determination, guts, and luck to score in their final drive, and give Mr. Tom Brady a minute and one last chance to score.  They didn’t do it.  The hail marys were for naught, and the middle of the field was ignored.  It would cost them all the glory in the world.

It was a great game because it was like a great soccer match.  Yes, I just took four paragraphs to get to the point.  Here’s what the last paragraph would read like for a comparable soccer match: &

Anyway, sure because it’s the World Cup, 1 billion people watched the Final, whether they give a damn about football or not.  Whether they can tell offside from an offside trap, they watched.  And for any sports fan, even if you’re not a footy fan, that was a hell of a game.  A tied game going into the last 10 minutes of regulation that was not unlike an intense chess match, with the stellar defense from both sides keeping the attacks to dangerous but not goal-producing, but only some inspired teamwork and flair finally resulting in goals for both sides.  It looked like we were heading into extra time, and yet, with time running down, one side broke through with sheer determination to go up 2-1, and give the other side five minutes and one last chance to score.  They didn’t do it.  The long balls to the forwards were for naught, and building from the midfield was ignored.  It would cost them the World Cup.

I’m not the type to preach that soccer is better than football.  I like all sports, and readily admit that, a Zidane headbutt aside, the last WC final was not as good a match as this year’s Super Bowl.  No way.  France and Italy might have tied 1 - 1, but it was mostly out of timid playing, not stout defense.  (I may have to back off that a little, Zidane’s point blank header that was parried away by Buffon in the late second half was jump-out-of-my-seat fantastic.)  Let’s say they were both excellent, and that the Super Bowl was a little better.  Let’s also agree that Zidane’s headbutt on Materazzi was the World Cup version of Janet Jackson’s iron-wrought booby popping out: everyone remembers it, esepecially the non-sports fans.

What’s better than a game with rising dramatic tension?  That’s what any soccer match inherently has over any football match.  By the nature of the game and the nature of relegation/promotion, only the teams that are somewhat comparable in skill play each other and you don’t get 6-0 games often, soccer’s version of the 45-0 games like the Patriots first half of the season.  But back to the nature of the soccer game, and how it is built for tension in its most basic ways.  Let’s say a soccer match is 1-0.  The tension is now in that next goal, if it comes.  If the other side scored, it’s 1-1 and back to square one.  If the first team scores, it’s 2-0.  The tension is still in the next goal.  If the other side scores, it’s 2-1 and they have all the momentum in the world at that moment.One of the old sayings about the game is that the most dangerous lead to have is the early 2-0, cause the other side has the rest of the match to build and get that one goal, then the team in the lead has lost the momentum and is battling form the back of the heels. 

And make no mistake, momentum is for real in American football but it’s even more palpable in soccer, where there are no timeouts and the same 11 guys who attack are the same 11 guys who defend; that same left back who came up for an attack has to drop back and defend against the other sides’ right winger.  The truly well played soccer match has an ebb and flow of tension unparalleled in other sports.You can’t tell me that you haven’t been to an NBA game or an NFL game and even at the most dramatic time, you found yourself completely zoning out during a coach’s timeout, or the dreaded TV timeout where they find some schmuck to sing “Sweet Home Chicago” and the guy thinks he’s on national TV although the entire point of the TV timeout is to put more ads on. <br><br> In the NFL, the timeouts for ads is even worse because you already have all that time being wasted on personnel changes between downs, culminating in the Super Bowl, where 85% of the viewership doesn’t care about football and watches for the ads or because they want to be a part of whatever is getting their significant other so excited about, and those who care about football have to watch personnel changes leading to penalties, like the punt where NY had 12 men on the field.  Can you imagine a Super Bowl being lost because one asshole can’t get his fat ass off the field before a snap?Yes, this is the most watched sport in America and not one fan can possibly know all the rules, infractions, and penalties that can be called.  The NFL Official’s Handbook must be worse than the IRS tax code.

Contrast that with soccer, where there’s only like 3 rules but no two officials will ever see or interpret them the same way.  This probably leads to the disgusting amount of flopping and diving you typically see from the players who come form countries where long hair on men is as fashionable as Levi’s jeans.  But I digress, and should get back to talking about Super Bowl ads before I lose the plot again.  (Damn alcohol and toxins).

Super Bowl ads.  Do you like them?  They ran a poll on a big website asking people why they are interested in the Super Bowl and “To watch the commercials” was actually an option.  There is no reason to justify living this way, and if you do, you aren’t really reading into this, the 10th paragraph of a trainwreck of a rant, so therefore you don’t exist.

Why do I watch the Super Bowl?  Not just to see a great game, but to watch it on my big ass HD television.  And to watch every single 2-yard gain play in super slo-mo and admire how that guard blocked that tackle with just enough holding to be effective but not to get caught.  It’s the only way to really enjoy it, cause going to a live football game is even less enjoyable than a live basketball game.  No replays, no announcers, and if you are anything like me you participated in the only competition available to the fans: who can be the drunkest, loudest, full-of-foodest fan coming out the tailgate party and into the stadium.Really, let’s face it.  The Super Bowl is the all-in-one package to sit at home with friends and drink booze and eat food and enjoy your consumer electronics and make fun of commercials and bet on halftime shows.  If you are lucky, it might actually be a good dramatic game.  Out of the last 10 Super Bowls, maybe 5 or 6 were close and that’s considered a good run.  So I’d have a 50-50 chance of seeing a close game.  If I wanted to increase my chances of seeing a dramatic, close game, I’d go to a live soccer match.