Super Bowl Can't Come Soon Enough

Two-week break between games breeds vapid nonsense

Loving sports requires a lot. Sports ask for sacrifice. They ask for time. They ask for money. They ask that you sit through five or six stupid Bud Light commercials every time there's a TV timeout. They ask that you deal with Chris Berman. They ask that you put aside that book you're reading for three hours so you can glimpse the momentary things that make the experience so worthwhile, the reasons we keep coming back. Sports ask for it all, and we give it.

So it goes with the Super Bowl. In order to get to a brilliant, four-hour stretch of sports-related fun -- even the commercials are a good time -- we have to deal with two weeks of vapid silliness.

Now that we know which teams are going to be in the sport's championship, we can begin to surmise all of the storylines, and because there are two weeks between now and the actual game, we have to hear these same storylines again, and again, and again, until they reach the point of utter saturation.

And then, of course, there's Media Day, perhaps the most navel-gazey of any media event anywhere. Ostensibly meant as group interview sessions to generate news coverage for the game, Media Day is now a news item in and of itself. Media don't just cover the players; they cover the media covering media day. It's enough to make one's journalistic compass go haywire.

Of course, it's not all bad. The build-up does create a certain brand of suspense. But too often that suspense -- genuine excitement -- is outweighed by a sense of relief when the game arrives, the feeling that finally, we can watch some football.

These are the sacrifices we make. There are inherent to being a sports fan. But it doesn't mean we can't wish for a better -- less drawn-out, more compacted, less silly -- Super Bowl run-up. It would make everyone's lives a little bit more sane. 

Copyright FREEL - NBC Local Media
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