Why We Need The Super Bowl LV

Every year I seem to get caught up in some of the excitement surrounded America's newest - if unofficial - national holiday., the Super Bowl.  It has everything for everyone.  Football of course.  But even if you don't like or don't know much about football, there are the commercials, the halftime entertainment, the pageantry and the technicolor field of play.    Plus the snacks and foods at Super Bowl parties.  It has been and continues to be a national phenomenon one which almost no one can not be at least aware of.

I find refreshing that the Super Bowl, and most of Super Bowl Sunday, is apolitical.   It doesn't seems to matter if you are red or blue in you allegiances.  Just pick a team and root root root.  Quarterbacks are the stars and it seems they carry everything on their shoulders.  Can you honestly say you haven't heard of Tom Brady?  I'm sure there are other team members on both sides who are equally great at what they do, but it is the quarterbacks are the main attraction it seems.

I find it personally amusing that I know any of this.  I am not a football fan by any means, yet year after year I tune in.  The singing of the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful seemed particularly poignant this year even if I think the performers were not exactly on key or up the monumental task of these challenging songs.  Amanda Gorman's poem was moving in the way it honored the pandemic first line workers.  I missed the halftime entertainment, but from the clips I've seen, I wonder if I need to see it.  

The Super Bowl game itself was a lopsided victory to be sure.  Not at all the battle of the titans promised the viewing public.  I lost interest and had to leave for a while anyway.  But in its wake, the triumph of supposed underdog Brady, is fun to think about.  Underdog?  At 43,  I guess it proves age is relative.

Overall, I think this is an afternoon of fun and excitement much of America needs after a year of outrageous and tragic events.  It was just a year ago the Pandemic began to flare up.  And the election was kicking into alarming high gear.  Protests everywhere regarding Black Lives Matter and more.   We all need a break now and then.  

Now it's over, Super Bowl LV goes into the annals of history.  Time to turn our attentions to world and national events of more consequence again.   But at least for one day, many of us were focussed on something of little consequence that gave us some relief from what is now a daily reality show.      

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