It is 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2013. Super Bowl XLVII is about to begin, as millions upon millions of Americans sit glued to their television screens; however, not all of them are watching it to enjoy what may perhaps become a legendary football game. Their anticipated viewing pleasure? The Beyoncé Bowl.
The Super Bowl has been a source of American entertainment for 47 years, each year attempting to be just as robust than the one before it. Few remember what the event was like in its early years, but nowadays the hype seems to be about anything but the football aspect of the game. The halftime show, million-dollar advertisements, food preparation for Super Bowl snacking, beer and even a separate entity, the Puppy Bowl, have captured our attention and stolen our hearts, leaving the Super Bowl just a careless afterthought. Such is the sorry state of our society, succumbing to silly sideshows. Gone are the days of the Super Bowl being about the game and only the game. Even a power outage, though impactful nonetheless, was the most discussed event the next day when the Ravens’ victory ceased to matter as people moved on from their now-anachronous Super Bowl mindsets. I mean, come on, people; there were stats on the screen that showed the “number of yards since the power outage” as if it were a significant statistic. Fact was purposeless and not necessary at all to the overall game, but it was a fun tidbit that provided entertainment to the Super Bowl audience, and that’s all that matters, right?
Then again, this nostalgic old fart may be geographically biased; the stigma concerning NYU students exhibits its own powerful influence over my Super Bowl experience. I’m sure there are places where the majority still follows the pursuit of football rather than the “added special effects,” probably more apparent in my southern brethren where the pigskin followers run much more rampantly. We northern students aren’t exactly known for our spirit — our enrollment at this school is not an act of support for our favorite college sports team. You won’t find faces or bodies painted violet and white or people screaming their heads off in pure, blind, delirious joy. There’s no room for tailgating in Manhattan, let alone a stadium around which to congregate. We have to face the fact that we’re geographically predisposed not to have any quintessential sporting traditions, and that itself may explain as to the rise of the cynicism so predominant at our lovely university.
Not paying attention to the sports aspect of the Super Bowl has become so hip and anti-conformist that, just like the actual hipster movement itself, it is now mainstream. The number of Facebook statuses and tweets about Beyoncé far outnumbered those of the excited few who still truly believed in the spirit of the game. We are a university of mainstream hipsters. It only seems natural that the environment is chock-full of snide cynicism, where “You there guy move that ball thing” is heard more frequently than actual football jargon. But I believe in football. There are those who still watch the Super Bowl for the actual game, and while they are few and far between, I respect their endeavors. Keep on truckin’.
Matt Luo is a staff columnist. Email him at [email protected].
