Thinking Super on Sunday

I am just old enough to remember professional football before the Super Bowl. There were two leagues who kept to their own gridirons. It was a new day for football when the AFL-NFL merger made one national champion possible. I followed football faithfully through the Tom Landry and Earl Campbell years. There came a time in the 1980’S when I didn’t care anymore. But even after I quit watching there was still the Super Bowl, standing as a mid-winter festival extravaganza.

It has been a curiosity to me to watch the Super Bowl Sunday become a national holiday of beer and bean dip. It is a day worthy of parties. People who don’t even know the difference between a cornerback and a coffin corner have their buffalo wings on Super Bowl Sunday (SBS) Church programs are planned around the date. Super Bowl Sunday joins Christmas and Easter as the third major feast day of the year. The football game is barley the focus anymore. The commercials, halftime shows and point spread create more interest than the line-up. Some attempt to redeem the day by making it a national food drive day. It is a grand day of getting together for our national pastimes of snacking and spectator sports.

Don’t be fooled, Super Bowl Sunday is about money. From the parking attendant to the starting quarterback to the advertising executive, it is about money. Always falling between Christmas and Ash Wednesday SBS is the first party of the year hinting at what comes on Shrove/Fat Tuesday’s gluttony. A festival of excess seems misplaced this year with so many becoming unemployed. Beer and bean dip is pointless to the recently laid off.

After September 11, 2001 we asked ourselves how much of normal life was appropriate. We wondered when normal would return. When would we laugh again and stop looking over our shoulders. There was a surge of patriotism as we posted UNITED WE STAND and GOD BLESS AMERICA on every bumper and marquee. For a few weeks church attendance was up. We were preparing for whatever was to come. And then our appropriate response was not conservation or sacrifice but shopping. Our fear was wrapped in the flag and cash register tape.

We cannot spend our way out of the present crisis. Spending what we did not have put us here. Why can’t we invest in one another as we invest in SBS? As the championship game has taken on baggage to increase its appeal, we must lighten our loads and, perhaps, as need be, live less appealing lives. It may all be about money, but we can be about uniting communities. National security is more threatened by unemployment than unfenced borders. Trust is our greatest need and our greatest loss. A wardrobe malfunction and several versions of geezer rock have made recent SBS half times memorable. I suggest we turn off half time this Sunday and discuss the two slogans from September 11. How do we stand united? How is God blessing America? And then the third question: HOW DO WE TURN THE ENERGY OF BEING BLESSED INTO THE ENERGY WE NEED TO STAND UNITED?