Dan Nied is sick of non-football-fans muscling in on his super holiday. He isn't taking it anymore.
It’s time that real fans take back their game.
Here’s the scene: You’re really interested in how the Patriots will try to stop the Panthers’ rushing attack in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Your buddy is having about 20 people over to watch the game. Suddenly, Tom Brady is orchestrating a game-winning fourth-quarter drive but all you can hear is a conversation about someone’s work.
You have no choice but to listen to two people ramble aimlessly while the biggest sports moment of the year unfolds before your eyes.
Welcome to the average Super Bowl party.
The Super Bowl party has almost single-handedly zapped the football part from the biggest football game of the year. And nobody realizes it.
It isn’t that I’m anti-social, anti-party or a recluse. It’s just that nobody can be considered a real football fan if they are at the buffet table gathering nachos during play. Of course, the only time you can spare to grab any food is during play since the only thing unanimously important to a typical Super Bowl party crowd is the commercials.
Super Bowl Sunday is the Fourth of July in winter. But it is more like Christmas a month late as the day has lost its true meaning, only to be celebrated by people who have no real reason to celebrate it other than the fact that everyone else is.
When I hear someone chat about relationships or dolls or cars during the game and then shush me when the commercials come on, I want to punch myself in the neck.
This needs to stop. If a person cannot name at least 10 players participating in the game, then that person should be barred from all Super Bowl-related activity outside their own home. Same goes for someone who hasn’t watched at least one football game during the regular season. And if you think that football is a form of animal cruelty because, well they don’t need to make the ball out of a pig, do they? Then you need to sit this one out too.
I have accepted the fact that the Super Bowl has combined popular culture and sports. In fact, I have embraced it as a chance to indulge in both for a full four hours. I enjoy MTV-produced halftime shows that feature Britney Spears in football pants. Terry Tate: Office Linebacker got me giddy. I was quite disappointed when they stopped the Bud Bowl (I had money on Bud Light that year). Hell, I even watched the halftime show in 3-D glasses in the early 1990s. But I love all aspects of this game. Sunday, most “football fans” will be watching only to see who comes out on top in the cola wars.
If this is you, then fine, enjoy the national anthem and the commercials and the halftime show on Sunday, but please do it with your own kind. And don’t do it around me, unless you want me to inflict a deep neck wound on myself.