As a non-American, cheeseburger football sure is baffling. Trumpets, marching bands, advertisements, words from sponsors, analysis of team make up, talking heads for half an hour, lots of zooming in and out graphics and animated player cards with stats... Finally the game! Lots of build up, here comes the action.... men run forward a little under 2 meters and fall over. Now everyone is walking off the field and a whole new team comes on to do the same, but in reverse. Except first we go through the ads and the trumpets and the sponsors and what not. Time elapsed: 45 minutes. Game time: 45 seconds.
It's such a slow game! How does it keep people's interest for what seems like half a day to see so little action??
To actually attempt to answer: it's a social event and the actual sports part is secondary to the trappings and commentary
Try to understand it like this:
The SuperBowl is more akin to a televised national religious holiday than a sporting event, brought to you by the best and most moral kind of social institution: Absurdly huge and wealthy corporations.
EDIT: If you tell an average American man you are not interested in the Superbowl... not that you dont watch football in general, but that you do not even care about the /Superbowl/?
They are likely to basically mock you for the rest of your life for reasons they will make up.
Football is very similar to a religion in America, in many ways.
Fuck are you on about? I'm middle-aged, friends and neighbors and coworkers of all races and incomes and ages, live in the South, and I don't know a soul who watched the game. If it wasn't for the Taylor Swift thing, I wouldn't have known it was last Sunday.
Agreed. I'm a soccer/hockey/volleyball fan myself, and really struggled to pay attention for the 4.5 hour event. 115 minute soccer games (once you include halftime and stoppage) are much more my speed.
Yet the way people talk about it she was focused on for half of the game.
I think I counted 4, maybe 5 times they cut to her?
When a single ad costs as much as it does ($7,000,000 for 30 seconds) that's quite a bit of free screen time
I came here for this comment. First thing I thought of- cheers. The woman needs no advertisement but I'm sure some people were watching just to see if she'd get that screen time.
I mean… how many times per game do they cut to other celebrities there? And more than once on the same celebrity?
There had to have been some obvious bias there.
oh no arguments, they definitely pandered to her and us swifties - just if you listen to the bro-flakes it sounds like there was hardly any game at all compared to Taylor coverage
I am not a swiftie, but uh basically dude-bros be freaking out so hard about this because to them football is their safe-space, their dude-bro, misogyny encouraged safespace.
Like I would watch a WNBA game over and NBA game anytime at this point precisely because of the less absurdly near superhuman physical conditions of the players actually results in games that involve more tactics and strategy and are thus more interesting to me to watch.
Every other guy I've ever met with maybe 6 exceptions thinks thats stupid, what makes more sense is to obsess over exact statistics of pro male players, belittle the fact that basically even an all star female team couldn't defeat a middling male team, and then gamble on games based on extremely faulty statistical 'logic'.
For these people, football, male sports, are both a safe space /and/ a form of vicarious living. They ultimately are not interested in female sports because it doesn't allow them to easily project themselves into the identity of their favorite player or team.
This all combined is hilarious because the average joe male NBA fan would get their shit wrecked by an average WNBA player, but many of them will act like this isn't true.
So, Swift is an invader. Into a masculine holy zone.
Theyve quite literally invented the whole insane conspiracy nonsense because their brains stopped working long ago and what a surprise, boastful misogynists are basically bullies, and fascism is as Orwell said, essentially the ideology of bullies applied to society as a political worldview.
I think that one of the reasons I personally view sports through a less hyper masculine viewpoint is that I trained in Karate as a kid and young adult.
In a Dojo, gender, sex, is meaningless, beyond essentially men should probably wear cups and women should probably wear specialized bras.
In both Kumite and Kata, it was not uncommon for a girl or woman to be capable of outperforming a boy or man.
Either there is no team, or the team is everyone, learning from everyone else.
I was first exposed to that with my father, who is so deep in conspiracy theories that I don't talk to him. Hell I don't even know where he is anymore. The biggest one is that Michelle Obama is actually a man. Which confused me until I learned why these people do. Exactly with what is happening with "deep state" garbage we see here.
Fragile men literally cannot understand strong women. They literally invent anything that helps them "justify" why this woman is so important. For Michelle there was no way a strong, classy, elegant, black woman could be regarded so well. She must be a man.
For Taylor she couldn't just be that popular. It couldn't be that other people (even men) like her and think it's fun, it has to be a conspiracy.
I both loathe and pity the people who think things like that. Loathe because they push this on other people, and pity because obviously they have such negativity pushed on them for so long, and they obviously have no idea how freeing it is just to let go off it.
I'm a man, and I took my wife to see Eras last year, and it was amazing. Shockingly enough, I'm still a man afterwards, and my wife loved that I shared my swiftie-ness with her. She even made freindship bracelets for us! It must be exhausting being them, worrying about their manliness because they saw Taylor on a screen for a few seconds.
Same with my dad as well, unfortunately. I actually had to move across the country due in no small part to his idiot ass making me homeless.
That part is complicated, but this part isnt: Hes a QNut with no friends, a long history of being right about everything all the time who has no problem lying by omission or directly to make himself into the victim, who thinks that Tom Hank's son rapes and eats kids for their adrenochrome, thinks antifa did Jan 6th, and took great pride in showing me exactly how he manufactures ghost guns, assault rifles with no serial numbers, in his garage.
He raised me on Rush Limbaugh. I was even into the conspiracy-world, but eventually went to college and got degrees in econ and poli sci and he would never listen to a damned thing I said about those topics. I eventually got out of the conspiracy world, but I couldnt get him out.
For all his talk of being highly logical, what he was actually good at was rhetoric and controlling conversations. Any time he actually sensed he was losing, topic change time for dumb jokes... or now he is offended because he doesnt appreciate being talked down to.
Sorry this is a rant but goddamnit what an abusive asshole. Hope I never fucking see or hear from him again.
Anyway: Yes, exactly, fragile insecure men hiding behind brute strength and little else literally cannot understand that there are many kinds of strength. Many of which involve integrity, which they infuriatingly claim to be all about, but in practice, will always choose what benefits their fragile ego the most.
The saddest thing in the world is a bully who never grew out of that mindset, but is now old, weak, non intimidating, and has nothing to show for their life other than repelling everyone around them, and is now a victim of society.
Unfortunately I know your story all too well, even down to Rush. Completely understand and empathize with you. I think you hit the nail on the head. They're older, they're angry, life didn't turn out how they wanted and they look for people to blame, who they deem lower than them.
Taylor entering the super bowl just pokes holes in that whole mindset. Football isn't just for them, they aren't the target audience, another thing that due to their stubbornness will leave them behind.
We get a few more people and I'd say we almost have the making of a new community here. It stings, for me I have my dad an ultimatum, he drops all the racism and hate and I stay in his life or I leave, and he chose his anger. I still process that, I'll continue processing that, and I completely feel for you in your situation. Stay strong, brother/sister
Thanks for the kind words.
Fortunately it looks like I will be able to escape the homelessness trap, though it will likely take me a few years to fully physically recover from everything I have been through, who fucking knows how long for mental or financial recovery.
A shame I am so well versed in politics and economics... and I dont think I ever want to discuss such things in person, ever again.
Too much trauma.
She was the first cut away after the winning kick. It is very clear for anyone she got more screen time after critical plays than most.
