The Super Bowl is one of the most baffling and brilliant events in the calendar. Three hour long national anthems, jets flying overhead, pomp and more pomp, fireworks, halftime shows and roughly 7300 commercial breaks all herald the final of one of the slowest sports on Earth.
Effectively, American Football is crown-green bowling as played by robots and extras from The Salute Of The Jugger.
It was, of course, just the tonic we all needed. A game many of us don’t understand, yet, filled with enough pizazz to distract us from all the horrible things going on in the world (although, that said, the constant referring to war veterans, fighter jets, patriots and talk of exploding rockets in the Star Spangled Banner didn’t help). Last night saw the whole world united and speaking with one voice. It was a beautiful moment that brought many close to tears. As one, the world stood together and said in a single voice… “Fuck. The Black Eyed Peas are awful aren’t they?”
If you didn’t know, then you probably don’t care that the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl last night. This is a good thing, mainly for two reasons. The first is that they’re owned by their fans as opposed to some wealthy oil baron or balding magnate with a head like a dinosaur egg. They’re a proper ‘people’s team’. And, much more importantly than all that, is that the Green Bay Packers have a much nicer typeface than the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The kit of American Football is incredibly important to the sport. Firstly, the helmets are really cool and secondly, to give the whole spectacle a grisly edge, players are required to wear tights so that you can clearly see the outline of their withered genitalia, presumably battered by rough manhandling during the sport itself and constant whippings from high-jinx with wet towels in the dressing room.
American football, like the country that invented it, is a spectacular and weird sport.
The same can’t be said of the woeful trophy though. The Super Bowl prize is hilariously awful. The design of the trophy is woefully poor, as was the cheap looking Camaro that is offered to the MVP (or Man of the Match) of the final. All that endeavour for a cruddy, boxy looking car, a terrible looking trophy and a special ring that Super Bowl winners receive.
And the sport itself is incredibly ugly for the most part. It seems that, in a squad of around 60,000 people, only four or five people actually get to have a go with the ball. The rest of the team is employed to simply run at the opposition as fast as they can in an attempt to make the outside of their bodies enter the innards of the other. It’s like watching a sex-scene in a world where romance has been replaced with android bears.
Of course, this will be news to Americans who don’t even watch the sport. They tune in for the Super Bowl to simply eat as many nachos as possible, dribble at the commercials and wait for the halftime show.
Last night’s halftime show was desperately poor. The Black Eyed Peas took to the stage dressed like Tron: The Musical, faced with what seemed like a brainwashed cult, all dressed in white and fawning with reverence. Later, these mindless minions could be seen dancing with cardboard boxes on their heads.
Thanks to the Black Eyed Peas not being very good at writing songs, they decided to nix the notion of doing a setlist of tunes in favour of a Stars On 45/Black Lace/Jive Bunny medley. Which just happened to feature Usher for absolutely no reason.
Tipped-up goth flavoured Pot Noodle, Slash, appeared to wank notes all over the place too, to become the biggest slag music has ever produced. Seriously. Pop stars may favour the guest rap, but Slash is always lurking in the shadows, waiting to play as many pointless notes as possible. When Slash dies, he’ll probably do a widdly solo over the sound of his own life support machine. Still, at least he didn’t look like Cyndi Lauper like anthem singer Christina Aguilera did.
Back to the game and a continued obsession and confusion with all things American from this side of the pond, the Super Bowl continued to be played in shards, with the game never wanting to ebb and flow, save for the occasional interception and frankly bizarre moment when the game got a war veteran to stand in the end zone and wave at everyone for a minute or two.
And so, a mindtrick worth of statistics, impenetrable jargon and more numbers than the dreams of an autistic bingo caller, the Super Bowl rolled in-and-out of town with maximum fanfare and players with the most amusing names in sport (we’re looking at you Zombo, Willie Colon and Markuise Pouncey), only to be forgotten almost immediately by everyone outside of America…
…’til next year.
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T-Cake says
I make no argument that the Camaro is no Caterham, Lotus, or Aston Martin. However, $31,000 isn’t much money for 422 horsepower and 408 lb-ft of torque. And think of it this way: not everyone can afford a completely impractical Caterham for $60,000. Or a great-looking, but shoebox-sized Lotus with a Toyota 1.8L engine for $50,000. And finally, no average American can afford even the baby Aston – a V8 Vantage – because it has a retail of $120,000. So no, the Camaro isn’t going to win every beauty contest. But it is good value for money, and people can afford it. That’s a big part of the reason why it has sold around 80,000 in two years.
Oh, and the Black Eyed Peas are the only thing that can make a Guns N’ Roses song worse. Or anything, for that matter.
mike says
GM employee are you ?
Rin says
I can tell you don’t like American Football, neither do I but don’t act as though Americans are pathetic for enjoying the sport or those like me who only watch because of the COMMERCIALS not the half time show they usually suck. However, the rest of the world gets in fights which cause death and bodily harm over Soccer (football) personally i think anyone that fanatical about a sport needs to get a life or admit they are homosexual male or a female who likes staring at men.
As for Football, I prefer Soccer but I honestly loath professional sports, over paid a**hats, all of them, doesn’t matter the sport there is no reason anyone should be paid that much money, the money is what makes them suck later down the line.
Arthur ASCii says
Camaro owner, are you?