Why I Don't Watch The Superbowl

Athletic Games Honoring Patroclus

It is very often not a good game.
It is a meeting between two mismatched teams, and this inequality is directly proportional to the vast amounts of hot air expended madly for the two weeks preceding to trick you - the viewer - into watching the shudder-inducing spectacle.

The Advertisements are the only creatively interesting thing to see, and one may watch them elsewhere.

The food served at get-togethers is lame... unless there is a chili cooking contest, and we don't drink spirits and no one has Coke Zero or Diet Pepsi. I usually settle for Sam Pellegrino's wonderful water.

No one even remembers the appalling disaster. I mean, the safety in the first twelve seconds should have been accompanied by a musical score of impending doom, repeating at various times with close-ups of Peyton Manning's harrowed face and eyes.
In retrospect, I was led to expect not only would Mr. Manning lead his team to a decisive victory, but he himself would be assumed into heaven to keep company with Elijah until some future event of eschatological importance.

That is not quite how it worked out.

I supposed I could have watched the entire Hindenburg-Crash-Known-As-Superbowl; I could have keened "Oh, The Humanity!"; I could have gotten a soul-numbing view of the ancient tragedy of Oedipus, as we go from the heights of highest Quarterback Supremacy to sitting unseeing in Colonis...
I don't know why Oedipus comes to mind. Perhaps it is the family thing: the fact that Peyton Manning has a brother, Eli Manning, who has not been quite as successful so far. There is something akin to Sophocles or Eugene O'Neill at work here...

... and I recall that Socrates was on his way to a tail-gate party before the Superbowl when he met Ion, the reciter of Homer, walking down the road. Socrates has already been drinking and talks about great games of Homer, like fighting in full armor in the hot sun, archery, and bearing one's fellows upon their shields.
The lady Aspasia happens by singing, and has a wardrobe malfunction, and no one remembers anything at all about the Superbowl pankration... just Aspasia's song.

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