Well, they’re playing a big football game this Sunday night. The Super Bowl. With a bunch of Roman numerals after it, LIII to be exact, so it has to be important.
Playing for the championship of the world are the upstart Los Angeles Rams and their Whiz Kid head coach Sean McVay and young quarterback Jared Goff vs. the dynastic New England Patriots with their Sensei head coach Bill Belichick and ageless quarterback Tom Brady.
It will even be televised, along with a yawning sea of commercials and a halftime entertainment extravaganza featuring Maroon 5, rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi along with two or three million dancers.
Personally, I loved the old days when the NFL title game wasn’t the over-hyped lavish production it is today, and the pre-game show was 30 minutes and not 30 hours.
With the exception of the rabid fans of each team and all the gamblers who have bet their wallet on a particular squad, the rest of us are merely hoping for The Greatest Super Bowl Ever Played, a surreal and superlative melodrama with an astonishing and shocking twist in the ending.
Granted, last year’s Super Bowl was the most improbable of all for Philadelphia Eagles fans who were high without chemical assistance for months after the Birds outlasted the aforementioned Patriots, 41-33.
The Eagles were a team of destiny. And you can’t screw with destiny.
Perhaps the most stunning finish to a Super Bowl transpired in 2015 when the Seattle Seahawks hijacked defeat from the jaws of victory.
Trailing 28-24 with just one yard to go and three plays left with one timeout, Seattle stupidly decided not to punch it in with the then baddest beast on the planet, Marshall Lynch – opting to have Russell Wilson throw a slant that was picked off in the biggest theft since the Great Train Robbery in 1963.
Suffice it to say, that climax was a bit more exciting than watching your Aunt Edna knit.
Once upon a time many Super Bowls were ugly enough to make you stick two drumsticks in your ears and stir. Some of those were big enough turkeys for NFL linemen to bench press.
Fortunately, recent Super Bowls have had considerably more drama than what actress was wearing what dress on the SAG Awards red carpet.
Let’s up pray that Rams-Patriots is a real firecracker in Atlanta – hot enough to melt the polar vortex that has gripped much of America by the throat this winter.
