COLUMN: How I learned to love the Super Bowl
Complaining about professional sports and people talking on cell phones while they drive are two things I’ve decided to give up in 2008. Both are here to stay and both are dominated by people who don’t think the laws of physics (or chemistry) apply to them. I have not yet identified a single positive attribute of driving while you call and text message your friends, so I’ll start with the Super Bowl. The number one best thing about the Super Bowl is that it’s not played on anyone’s home field. This is unique to football. Nearly all other professional team sports are played in cities where the teams reside. This is an important distinction on a number of levels. I always root for the visiting team because when that team wins, it not only disproves prayer and telekinesis, but it also quiets a lot of obnoxious people at the same time. Think about it: If the unified prayers, power of positive thinking, mind over matter or any of the other motivational speaker mumbo jumbo were true, the home team would win every time. You can’t tell me that 60,000 zealous Green Bay fans within 200 feet of the playing field couldn’t make every field goal attempt miss and every opposing player fumble, if mind control had any validity. Prayer is a much more complex issue because you would have to triangulate the power of prayer from millions of people thousands of miles away praying for an opposite outcome versus a smaller number in close proximity. Scriptural accounts are vague on the physics of wireless prayer transmission. If you throw in sincerity, inebriation and a chaste heart, you have an extremely complex logarithm in action. Or, it could just be the spiritual beings have no interest in sports. If this is true, it is equally disturbing because it means we are wasting a lot of prayers, which could have been used to feed the world. Anyway, my point is that it is statistically improbable that visiting teams would win as many games as they do if any of the aforementioned mind and spiritual powers worked. The other problem with hometown sports is that fans are the root word of “fanatic.” Painting oneself the team colors and shaving the team logo into your hair is great for the alcohol industry, but it has a limited effect on the outcome of the game. I freely admit to spending way too many hours of my dwindling life playing and watching sports, but I have never felt like I personally helped any team win by being a fan. Likewise, I can empathize with the pain of losing, but I have never felt personally responsible for their misfortunes. The Super Bowl has other things going for it such as Roman numerals. Outside of buildings actually built in Rome, when was the last time you saw XL used to describe anything other than a fat guy’s T-shirt? Dennis Hinkamp is not rooting for anyone in Super Bowl XLII but he does hope the commercials will be funnier than last year. Dennis works for USU Extension Communications. Comments and questions can be sent to him at dennish@ext.usu.edu.