It's a game.
Unlike most Super Bowls which tend to be anticlimactic, this one was excellent. I rooted for the underdog, without much hope they would win. The Rams offensive line was superb. There seemed no way that the Patriots could get through to sack the quarterback, or even bother him before he passed the ball for many yards or a touchdown.
There wasn't!
The strategy used by the Patriots Coach was excellent. He didn't try to get though that impassable line. Instead, he left enough in the line to protect against the run, while he flooded the backfield with defence players. These laid like blanket on the pass receivers, making it difficult for the Ram's great quarterback to find one open for a catch. Everyone was covered.
The Ram's receivers were very good - excellent athletes - and they still caught passes and made yards after they had caught the ball, by avoiding tackles with clever footwork. Yet, too often the Ram's quarterback found himself with the ball in hand looking every which way for a receiver to throw to.
An offensive line can protect the quarterback only so long before it begins to show holes. Then, a determined defensive line can find them. So, while the quarterback was running around looking for a receiver - he was caught - again and again.
The best quarterback (probably) in football, safely behind a line impregnable for the few seconds needed for him to throw - found himself on his back, or running for his life.
The Patriots ran into problems but they stayed with their strategy. The game was tied with a couple of minutes to go, then won with a 48 yard field goal - the ball sailing through the goal posts with zero time showing on the clock.
It just couldn't be better. I've only seen 3 games this season - the two championship games a couple of weeks earlier, and the Super Bowl - but it makes me wonder what I've been missing.
And the Canadian game is even better. It's faster, played on a larger field - the field behind the goal posts are in play - and it's difficult to be cautious. The rules mean you have to go for it. You can't adopt the "three yards and a cloud of dust" kind of play.
We haven't seen a Gray Cup for years down here, but if one of the 200 or so cable channels were to pick up the Canadian season and stay with it, I think a fan base would become established.
Didn't see, or hear, much of the half time show. It seemed pretty noisy, and music seemed to be mostly absent.
However, during half-time, we were discussing diverse subjects ranging from quantum theory to the history of economic depressions including the aftermath of the Great one, so we didn't much notice
Also we gambled, thereby exposing out decadence. Would the first commercial be an investment ad, a beer ad, a non-alcoholic drink ad, or what? (It was an investment ad.) As much as a dollar changed hands through the game.
Sorry I forgot to include mention of the Olympics, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, or even U2 - which vaguely impressed me with its devotion to noise and apparent absence of music.
It's a game, Chris.
Harry
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Christoph wrote:
I'm forwarding the following article as an addendum to the recent FWk debate
on sports vs. war and advertising, where some FWers opined that sports would
somehow "replace" wars. Rather, they are (ab)used to make war propaganda
(not only since Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin..).
Chris
________http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=12753________
That's entertainment
Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange
02.04.02 - The Super Bowl, played yesterday (a week later than
originally scheduled, due to September 11), is notable among major
American sporting events as well as major American pop culture
events for the extent to which it has always warmly embraced
America's wars.
Beyond the usual martial metaphors of the game itself (avoiding
the blitz by throwing the long bomb from a shotgun formation while
the offensive line kills them in the trenches), the National
Football League's premier game has gone out of its way in the past
to promote and glorify the nation's military.
The 1991 Super Bowl, played in the opening days of the Gulf War,
used its pre-game and halftime ceremonies (and assorted other
festivities) to plant wet fat kisses on the war that was at that
very moment massacring hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, with a few
dozen Americans lost. (The real toll came later -- illness and
suicide among U.S. soldiers, disease and privation among Iraq's
families.)
And yesterday brought more of the same. From Fox TV's repeated
camera shots of U.S. troops watching the game from Kandahar (at 4
a.m. local time?), to Budweiser ads with the Clydesdale horses
bowing to the Statue of Liberty, patriotism and warfare and
corporate branding were very much considered interchangeable, all
part of a spectacle suffused with smarmy jingoistic bullshit.
Even the Irish rock band U2 -- whose lead singer, Bono, was fresh
from hanging out with the world's corporate and political elite at
the World Economic Forum in New York -- was in the spirit. U2
first rose to fame off a breakthrough album in the early '80s
called "War" -- the band, born of a country plagued by war and
terrorism, was against it, and later songs like "Bullet the Blue
Sky" specifically ripped U.S. military adventurism and its impact
on poor countries. Yesterday, Bono finished the band's short
halftime show with the inevitable tribute to 9-11 victims,
literally wrapping himself in the American flag, as though
honoring 9-11's dead -- many of whom weren't Americans -- somehow
required solidarity with the U.S. flag and with the waging of yet
another war, or three, or five. Permanent war, reduced to
emotional spectacle and a brandable moment.
The Super Bowl is the premier annual spectacle not just in
professional football, but in the world of advertising. A
60-second TV ad during the game is the priciest air time in the
world, costing more than the GNP of some of the world's smaller
countries. Ad agencies and trade publications buzz for weeks with
anticipation over the wildest, flashiest, most expensive
commercials of the year, which the world's biggest companies
unveil during The Game to the estimated 130 million people that
are watching in the U.S. alone.
[...]
George Bush is free, of course, to say ridiculous and nonsensical
things, even when they piss off allies and commit soldiers to
battle; heck, it's what he does best. That, too, is entertainment.
But spending $3,200,000 of our tax dollars on Super Bowl
propaganda is neither entertaining nor appropriate.
Oh, and the game? The Patriots won. Go figure.
******************************
Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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