Super-Bowl or Super-Hype?

Tomorrow is the big day, and if you believe the hype, it’s not just a football game – it’s an epic match that just may change the state of the world.  Okay, so that’s a bit of hyperbole (I’ve been dying to use that word!) but if you’ve seen the commercials, the half-time show previews, the endless interviews, and the locker-room stories, it does seem to have taken on a life of its own.  It’s become a holiday, at least here in Boston and likely New York, where our sports rivalry is the stuff of legends.  The 2012 Super-Bowl is not just a sporting event – it’s somehow insinuated itself into our culture, our traditions, our lives.  Supermarkets are mobbed and it’s not milk and bread being snatched up, it’s chicken wings (a jaw dropping 100 million pounds of wings will be consumed!) and nachos and beer, all required accompaniments to the game.  THE GAME has led every news hour for weeks, and no detail, no matter how insignificant, has been left untouched which has inevitably led to the dreaded TMI and the leaked (pardon the pun) features of Tom Brady’s electric toilet. 

The world might end but the Super-Bowl will survive. 

To its credit, the Super-Bowl has something for everyone – the game, the entertainment, the drama.  No matter what side you choose, it’s a guaranteed evening of excitement.  And though it won’t change the world even a little bit, it will give each of us who watch, a reason to cheer or jeer, a chance to leave everything behind if only for a few hours.  And tomorrow, I will be one of the estimated 173 million watching the game.  I don’t how many of that 173  million will be cheering on the New England Patriots, but electric toilets or not, Tom Brady is my man!  Go Pats!