OP/ED: Super Bowl blues
By Michael Wirischagin
Super Bowl XLV sucked. Plain and simple, it sucked. Sure, I still may be a little bitter that the Green Bay Packers beat my Philadelphia Eagles in this year’s playoffs on their way to their Super Bowl crown, but even if that was the case, it still would have sucked. This year’s running of the Bowl did nothing for me as a fan of football. There was no spectacular catch by David Tyree to help win the New York Giants Super Bowl XLII, or an outstanding Ben Roethlisberger pass and catch to Santonio Holmes to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Super Bowl XLIII title. Or maybe it was because there was no outstanding defensive play that changed the game a la Tracy Porter intercepting Peyton Manning in Super Bowl XLVIIII that led to a New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl win. Maybe that’s made the game “suck.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t there. I would have noticed it. Looking back at the game between the Packers and Steelers for the Vince Lombardi trophy there some were ample spots for the magic moment to have happened. Let me set the stage. Two minutes left in the fourth quarter. Pittsburgh down by 6 points and have the ball. A touchdown would win it and give the Steelers the largest comeback victory in Super Bowl history. The scene is set. Roethlisberger has done it before. Look above. “This is going to be awesome,” I thought… but as anyone who watched the game could tell you, it wasn’t. With the turnover on downs, the game was over and the Super Bowl sucked. Packers win. The fact that the Steelers were able to pull the game to within a touchdown after being down 21-3 was something else but a comeback is not a comeback unless that team wins, because nobody will ever remember the comeback otherwise. Maybe that’s what it was – the comeback was never completed… or maybe not. As I write this and the more I think about it, I realize the real reason why Super Bowl XLV sucked was simply because it had so many lofty expectations to live up to as we, the football fans, have been spoiled in the past few years. Look at the list above. The three Super Bowls mentioned above were the three Super Bowls directly before this one. That’s why it sucked, because unless Michael Jackson magically appeared during the halftime show (which also sucked) and went on to suit up for the Packers and catch the winning touchdown there was no way that this game was going to be any good. The game became a product of its circumstances. Ultimately, however, everything is relative. So without a terrible Super Bowl once in a while, we would have nothing to measure the great ones against- and once again now we do.
The Super Bowl had to start over somewhere and apparently this was the year. I will get over my disappointment that was this year’s Super Bowl and only because I know next years won’t suck. Simply put: it has nowhere to go but up. I guarantee it.
