quote:

I'll be watching the Super Bowl, just like I've done since almost the first one. So will my wife - I think she loves football even more than I do.

Super Bowl II was held in the Orange Bowl in Miami. I was a football fan when I was younger, and the Dolphins were an AFL team, so I was partial to the upstart league.

Even though the game was sold out, the old blackout rules prevented locals from watching unless they were in the stadium.

My dad was there, but not in the audience. The game wasn't quite the media event it is today, so the pregame show was just for the stadium audience. They hired him to announce the show because he was a local acting teacher who led the Coral Gables high school drama program. They paid him a pittance. He was supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to give his time. I seem to recall that they wanted him back for Super Bowl III (Jets/Colts) but he declined.

I learned enough about football to follow a game when I was in marching band, but I just don't have the gene to care about watching a game unless people I personally know are involved. Otherwise, I just don't care which set of large, fast, ultra-coordinated does a better job of controlling the ball/puck/whatever.

I do enjoy watching athletes whose performances skew more toward art, like gymnastics and figure skating. The engineer in me rolls her eyes, though, at the effort to convert those activities, the quality of which is inherently subjective, into numerically scored competitions, so that somebody can be declared the winner.

Anyway, if people enjoy watching football, more power to them.

quote:

The engineer in me rolls her eyes, though, at the effort to convert those activities, the quality of which is inherently subjective, into numerically scored competitions, so that somebody can be declared the winner.

quote:

Originally posted by big al:
I'll be watching the Super Bowl, just like I've done since almost the first one. So will my wife - I think she loves football even more than I do.

I'm not surprised by this thread, however. There is a segment of the population that likes to say "I don't do the thing that a few hundred million other people do. That makes me special." Some of those people can't imagine the appeal of Donald Trump either.

Just don't think that being different is the same as always being right.

Big Al

Well stated. We will be watching, even though I’m hoping for a tie.

quote:

Originally posted by big al:
I'll be watching the Super Bowl, just like I've done since almost the first one. So will my wife - I think she loves football even more than I do.

I'm not surprised by this thread, however. There is a segment of the population that likes to say "I don't do the thing that a few hundred million other people do. That makes me special." Some of those people can't imagine the appeal of Donald Trump either.

Just don't think that being different is the same as always being right.

Big Al

Or maybe there are people who could not care less about professional sports.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:

I do enjoy watching athletes whose performances skew more toward art, like gymnastics and figure skating.

Check out these athletes:

https://youtu.be/2XN5mhdWoM0?si=EkLEbZIU4eGOduLL

https://youtu.be/j05VyG15Y9Y?si=aZmKI-vCbnvN99GU

And perhaps the best of the best:
https://youtu.be/vnV4Vy7wiNE?si=WMUvhDnXiMga0LB9

(I found those the other day when my physical therapist didn’t believe me that a rola-bola is a real thing, and even more that one might juggle while atop one.)

I’m going to the annual party at friends’ house. It’s a nice chance to get together. I like the ads, have no real interest in football.

This year, I actually know which teams are playing! Most of the gang is rooting for SF. I’m rooting for Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team, as a contrarian. Go Chiefs!

If you’re going to watch a Super Bowl, that was the one to watch. It started slow but the last few minutes of overtime were real nail biters!

Congratulations to Taylor Swift’s boyfriend!

i don't watch football. ever. for any reason.

Why not?

The half time show was awful. The guy pretty much phoned it in.

The ads weren’t much good either.

But the game? Excellent!

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Why not?

for starters, i find it insanely boring. (this was all i intended to say, but then i got to thinking... oh well.)

my dad, whose interests in music, the outdoors, fishing, reading, and many other things i shared, must have thought i would invariably share his passion for football (he was on his high school team, and in college was in the marching band playing during football games). when i was a kid he took me to a washington redskins game, as eager to share the finer points of the game with me as he'd been to explain the finer points of beethoven's late string quartets.

i was bored out of my mind. i perked up a bit during half time. but that was over all too soon. we never went to another football game. my dad insisted that the game was fascinating, even intellectual, which of course got an eyeroll from me. i had lots of opportunities to watch on tv with him, but never did.

i did go to my stepson's high school games, to be there as his family and support. he got into an ivy league school on the stregnth of his football chops (as well as a lot of hard academic work). then he got a severe concussion during one of his college games and had to quit playing. all of us had been trying to talk him out of playing football since he was a little kid, but he wasn't the kind of kid you could keep from what he wanted. the damage that concussion did to him was serious. he had to lie in a dark room for many weeks. now he says no child of his will ever be allowed to play football.

aside from all that i hate what football has done to academic institutions--i think it warps them. i lived for 25 years in a college town where football siphoned off far too many of the school's resources--a school where i taught. plus the players were literally rapists who got away with it because they were on the gloried football team (jon krakauer wrote a book about this). i hate the rah-rah mindset of having a team to root for. i hate the commercialism of the super bowl. and in general, i hate the us-versus-them mentality of professional sports teams and their fans. and the amount of money involved is an obscenity.

i do like sports, but i like to play them myself, not watch them. i played all kinds of team sports growing up. but the values promoted by the superbowl aren't my values. it's a poor use of resources, it causes actual physical harm, and it wants us to believe that physical conflict--no better than a barroom brawl--is fun.

i don't think there's a single redeeming quality about football, when you add all that up. i don't want my eyeballs contributing to the problem.

I used to be a huge sports fan. Now the only sport I watch or care much about is Formula 1 racing.

I used to get so emotionally invested in who won a game that to learn to temper my anger issues I had to stop watching or caring about it.

The same thing happened with politics for me as well.

It was a great game. It did end in a tie, but overtime produced a winner. Bob made his soon to be famous vegan cheese pizza.
I like football and futball. I played football until I had an unrelated eye injury and had to quit for a year. The other guys doubled their size in that year, so I tried track.

First and foremost, I watched the game with my entire PDX family. We are all football fans. It was one of the better games. I just wished the 49ers had pulled it off because I almost always root for the underdog, and Brock Purdy (49ers QB) grew up in Gilbert AZ, very near my old stomping grounds.

That said, I also am generally put off by the sentiment that, because I'm a football fan, my IQ must be 2 digits, I have no moral compass and/or am promoting the worst things in society. This is often delivered in a holier-than-thou tone as if I also have confessed that I like to kick puppies.

From where I sit, nothing is as black and white as these types of judgments. For everyone whose life was "ruined" by football or any other team sport, I can point you to others whose life was greatly enhanced, and not just monetarily.

My grumpy 2c