And So It Goes

Today is Super Bowl Sunday and they say that there may be more people around the world watching this game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles than watched the 1969 moon landing. I know it is unAmerican to say this, but I don’t get it. I understand that people like a spectacle and the Super Bowl show is nothing if not a spectacle. This is about a $100 million show. The stadium operations and event production are usually around $10-15 million, which covers field and stadium preparation, power and technical infrastructure, temporary construction and modifications and all the stadium staff and crew. The halftime show production (a huge part of the event for many watching), typically costs another $10-15 million for stage construction and effects, performer fees (though headline performers typically aren’t paid), backup dancers and musicians and all the rehearsals and setup. Another big part of the cost is security operations cost, which is approximately $6-7 million for local law enforcement, private security firms, anti-terrorism measures and crowd control. Additional major costs include insurance coverage ($5-10 million), transportation and logistics ($3-5 million), marketing and promotional events ($20-30 million) and all the media facilities and broadcast support ($15-20 million). Needless to say, that cost is easily eclipsed by the revenue from the event from ticket sales (@ ~ $3,000/seat for 83,000 seats = $250 million) , advertising ($8 million for 30 seconds x 50 minutes = $800 million) , and broadcasting rights (Fox is paying $2.2 billion annually to the NFL). That’s a lot of juice for the owners, players and league overall. That’s presumably why Roger Goodell makes $64 million annually for heading the league versus the average $17.7 million earned by the average Fortune 500 CEO. There must be someone who understands the economics of this massive business.

Here’s the thing that I am not ashamed to admit, I just don’t care about football. I don’t care much about any organized spectator sports, but that general posture doesn’t offend people as much as specifically saying you don’t care about football. I am watching the Super Bowl, just like I pretty much do every year, but I do it because the entire world seems to be doing it and it seems especially silly to watch anything else during this time slot. If for some reason there were no game today, I would not miss a beat. And yet, the majority of Americans (I think its safe to declare its a majority) pay great attention to the game from the start of the pre-season, through the eighteen-week season and then into the playoffs, culminating with the blessed event itself, Super Bowl LIX, the 59th contest since 1967. No amount of injuries, concussions, or even the one NFL Players’ strike (which lasted 24 days back in 1987) seems to stop the enthusiasm. I understand that football is the modern-day gladiator game and that human nature likes physical and athletic contests with as much violence as can be mustered without completely abandoning civility and common sense.

Part of my problem is that I only just barely understand the game and all its permutations and strategies. As a kid in Wisconsin in the sixties (the existence of the early Green Bay Packers being a dominant cultural force with names like Bart Starr and Paul Hornung), we played a little bit of football on the proverbial sandlot, but baseball was still the dominant sport. When I went off to prep school at Hebron Academy in South Central Maine in 1967, I was required to pick a sport to play each season and for that first fall season, I chose JV Football. I came to the game with minimal awareness of how the game was played and even less awareness of how tough the training was. I was 5’9” and weighed 210 pounds, which was a good size for the sport, but having never played any organized contact sports, I was overwhelmed by the physical training. I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but fortunately, the team coaches were good enough to make some allowances for my lack of training and fitness (skiing, golf and tennis simply did not prepare me for the gridiron) and they worked with me because my size was clearly an advantage, if for nothing else, at least for some intimidation on the line. I made it through that season and while I did not cover myself in glory, I at least stayed with it and got through it. I can’t say I missed not playing the next three years when we moved to Rome and there was no high school football being played. Perhaps most importantly, those three years overseas put me in a place where I completely lost sight of football. I literally do not believe I saw one game on TV, which made me one of the most football disconnected high school Americans.

During orientation week at Cornell in the fall of 1971, the football team coaches were on the lookout for talent among the new freshman class of 2,800 who were wandering around in the massive Barton Hall indoor arena, signing up for courses and various clubs. Two of the freshman team coaches spotted me in all my 6’5” 310-pound glory. I was no better trained four years after my last run-in with football. In fact, my BMI had gone from 31 to 37 (25 BMI would have been ideal). But these guys were used to finding hunks of freshman meat and figuring out if there was potential. They put me through a set of drills which were not altogether unfamiliar to me. The one I remember the best was getting down on all fours into what is called the crab position. They asked me to move forward, backward and, most importantly to them, side-to-side, in quick succession. They said that was the best way for them to gauge coordination and mobility potential. They were actually reasonably impressed by my performance, so they sat me down and told me that if I would join the team, they would spend the next year (including and especially the next summer) training me and making me totally fit and ready to play. They said that if I did that and took it seriously, they would promise me that I would start on the varsity my sophomore year.

I remembered the pain and suffering from Hebron JV football and then thought about committing my entire freshman year to this football endeavor. The short term cost of this seemed too high to me. I rationalized it by saying that I was way behind on understanding the game as well as in my level of physical preparation. If I had done that, I am sure I would be more fit during my adult life than I was (unless, of course, if I had sustained some bad injury, which happens all too often in football). But I didn’t do it and other than going to most Cornell home football games for the first two years, I pretty much ignored the sport otherwise. As an adult, I am always asked if I played football. It got to the point at one time that it was just easier to say I had played a little college ball because guys just have too much love for the sport to think that anyone who has the size to play wouldn’t try to play. I imagine its like seeing someone who’s 6’10” or taller with regard to basketball.

So here I am, a 71 year old adult who has watched less football than most Americans of either sex and any age. I’ve never been to a pro game in person, which is not the case with the other pro sports. These days, I do not fight the football imperative when family is over for the holidays, I go with the flow because I can see how important it is to them. I still don’t get it, and so it goes.