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The Super Bowl Isn't Just A "Mass-Marketed Eyesore"
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Gothamist Staff
Published Feb 2, 2014
Modified Feb 2, 2014
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By
Gothamist Staff
Published Feb 2, 2014
Modified Feb 2, 2014
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As a Seattle-to-New York-back-to-Seattle transplant, I've had to rely on my New York friends to keep me posted about life in the city as a Seahawk fan in the days leading up to the big game. I asked my friend Claire, who I've known since middle school, what she'd be up to on Super Bowl Eve. We traded plans—I'd be making Seahawk-colored hair bows, she'd be riding the toboggan in Times Square—and after we'd sent a few messages back and forth, I closed with, "Remember not to take any of the orange subway lines to show your disdain for the Broncos!"
I hit send, and was about to follow up with a "Just kidding!" emoji when I realized I actually wasn't kidding at all. All of which is to say: I care about the Super Bowl. I know you might not. But unlike my pals over at the AV Club, I do care that you don't care about the Super Bowl. I wish you would. And I think you might like it if you tried.
Still, I apologize for the fact that Seahawks and Broncos fans (to say nothing of Ziggy Marley) have taken over your city. As a former New Yorker, I can imagine how shocking and saddening it must be to have the usually tranquil, pastoral atmosphere of Times Square overrun with tourists and noise. My prayers are with you.
I'm an unlikely sports fan. I grew up in a family that prioritized music and art, went to college where sports were an afterthought, and gravitated toward friends who liked to go to rock shows instead of games on the weekends. (It's okay to say you don't like sports because the jocks were mean in high school, but don't forget that everyone in high school is mean.)
One of my first bosses told me that if I anticipated working in a male-dominated environment, I should have at least one sport that I could discuss with authority. I took his profoundly sexist advice, and while it never really paid off (my knowledge of Star Wars has won me way more workplace points), I was hooked.
That said, there are things about the NFL that terrify and depress me. I made the mistake of watching The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on the same day as a regular-season football game this year, and the parallels still haven't left me: smile and speak up for the cameras, and then go get pummeled while we watch and bet on you!
It troubles me that Onion headlines like "New Concussion Test Requires Players to Grunt With Dazed Expression Before Returning To Field" barely even read as satire. I'm also concerned about corporate greed and league working conditions, although you're just as likely to line the pockets of big business and contribute to mistreatment of low-wage service employees at, oh, say, a Phish concert in Madison Square Garden as you are at an NFL game. Entertainment is often morally ambiguous.
Super Bowl tourists in Times Square (Getty Images)
But I take massive issue with anti-Super Bowl argument that casts football and professional sports as "the opiate of the masses" and sports fans as passive morons. In Seattle, as our Island of Misfit Toys team has improbably flourished, nobody's sedated and nobody's passive. This city sometimes treats disengagement as a virtue, but the level of engagement with this team and with their stories is—forgive the sportscaster parlance—really something special.
As Joan Didion wrote (as essayists are much too fond of quoting), we tell ourselves stories in order to live. Sports is one of the few shared narratives we have left, and so we've been telling each other the story of these Seahawks all year. We talk about Russell Wilson, the too-short, late-chosen quarterback who has no business being as good as he is and no reason to be as kind as he is (he makes, and never misses, weekly visits to Children's Hospital). We talk about Marshawn Lynch's ability to explode through a defensive line like it's not even there, fueled by the power of Skittles. No one shuts up about Richard Sherman, though I prefer to talk less about his press conferences and more about his exquisite, otherworldly ability to not give a fuck. And we talk about Derrick Coleman, thriving as the NFL's first deaf offensive player.
No one's slack-jawed, and no one's staring into any abyss. These are our guys. We can't look away.
It's probably true that there are "better things" to do with your time than watch the big game, although I'll argue that the world is hard and terrible, and in the face of that, the idea of "better things" becomes immaterial. If you find something that softens the world for you, embrace it. And refuse to take any shit for it.
Give it a try. If you've got a spare four hours on Sunday (although please mute the halftime show, for the sake of our collective dignity). Find a bar, eat hot wings, yell at a TV in public, high five strangers, lose your voice. Root for the Broncos if you want. You might have fun. But if you don't, I won't mistake your disinterest for a lack of feeling. Just please don't mistake my caring for a lack of intellect.
Lauren Hoffman lives in Seattle and writes about Glee for New York Magazine.
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