Ah! Nothing like the yearly celebration of watching full-grown men smash into each other at high speeds at the number one breeding ground for CTE. As the number one sports fan (obviously—I definitely did not watch the game just to see Michael Cera moisturize a rock with CeraVe), I feel the inordinate burden of providing my expert athletic opinions. What exactly are those opinions? Well, they’re mainly just my gripes with football as an institution.
- Timing
Football is considered the heart and soul of this nation. It’s incredibly patriotic and incredibly American. When I speak about football, my moral compass—the devil and angel on my shoulder—transform into two bald eagles with classic mullets. But what does it say about this country that a simple one-hour-long game actually takes three to four hours? There are four quarters, each lasting 15 minutes. If I learned basic mathematics correctly, then that should make an hour-long game. Correct? Wrong. Because football is nothing more than an expansion of America’s failed public education system. We don’t fund our schools correctly, and because of that, when we send our best and brightest off to careers as sports inventors, they can’t do basic arithmetic. Because, in their minds, 15 minutes times four is actually four hours. Four hours in which the number of ads outweighs the playing time three to one. Four hours in which I think I actually saw Usher have longer consecutive movements than any of the players added together. In fact, I think I saw Usher sweat way more than any athlete because, frankly, he played for more than 20 seconds at a time, and also, he just sweats a lot. Someone needs to check up on him. He was sweating like a platypus sweats her milk when her platypus children are ravenous.
Back to sports, though: why is football so slow? I thought we were a fast-moving country. A progressive country that created genius inventions like the indestructible Wonder Bread, the world’s largest rubber band ball and the unforgettable tune of the Empire jingle. Frankly, I thought we were a Chevrolet commercial where a car scales a mountain, swishing snow in its tracks. I thought we were moving. But if football is as quintessentially American as we are told it is, America must be a speed-walking race in a retirement home. America must be the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) because a game of football is as lengthy as trying to get your permit. You passed the permit test three hours ago and nobody else is in the DMV, but you won’t get your permit for at least another hour. Football is actually just the athletic version of a filibuster. So gear up to watch another hour of 15-second clips of running, or, watch old clips of Ted Cruz reciting “Green Eggs and Ham” in the Senate for an equally rapid performance.
- Introductions
Unlike Key and Peele’s hilarious East/West College Bowl Series, the Super Bowl does not display epic introductions of players with goofy names. In fact, I don’t recall being introduced to the players at all. How am I supposed to care about the athletes when I can’t identify who looks like they would be a high school bully and who looks like they would help an old woman cross the street? All I got was those tiny images of players on the bottom of the screen while the game was already going. Now I have to spend my time trying to link Brock Purdy to a player on the field when they all are in the exact same outfit. It’s like trying to find Where’s Waldo or a specific pre-teen buying a Stanley cup at Target. They all look the same. I don’t care about the players because the broadcasters never told me who they are or what their story is. You know, the Super Bowl could learn a thing or two from “American Idol,” where, sometimes, the backstory is more important than the actual singing.
- Inclusivity
This gripe is actually a genuine gripe, not some complaint I have because I’m unathletic and I don’t really understand sports. I took five years of American Sign Language (ASL) in high school, and my teacher always taught me to pay attention to the Super Bowl because the one thing that the broadcast never does is show the interpreter. For Deaf football fans everywhere, it’s incredibly important to show the interpreter during the national anthem and the halftime show. Just looking at the national anthem, I think I saw the interpreter one time before the song actually started. Instead of an interpreter—an essential aspect of inclusive broadcasting—I saw a clip of a random man crying. How is that more important? I don’t think anybody cares that a player who will make no other specific appearances throughout the entire game loves the national anthem so much he’s in tears. Reba McEntire was good, but she was not that good. Nobody is good enough for the streams that I saw running down that man’s face. He really did listen when Justin Timberlake said “Cry Me a River.” The news also broadcast an entire 10-second clip of the stadium. Not the people in it. Not the field. The outside of the stadium. An undecorated sphere. There was quite literally nothing to see there because the broadcasters obviously couldn’t think of anything to display. But what they could have displayed—the obvious visual answer—would be the interpreter who spent significant time preparing for this moment. The interpreter who worked incredibly hard crafting an interpretation of the national anthem to display at one of the most watched events of the year. But the interpreter was entirely ignored. And we know from last year’s interpreter of Rihanna’s halftime show that people actually like the interpretations. People loved the interpreter’s performance, and she went ultra-viral. So where was the interpretation this year? Where was the inclusivity? It must’ve gotten stuck waiting in the DMV line.
Despite all of my gripes with this year’s annual celebration of middle-aged men living vicariously through football players who will never know they exist, I enjoyed the Super Bowl. I’ll take any excuse to eat wings and endless chips and dip. Because, for me, it all comes down to food. And Michael Cera, obviously.