Marketplace of Ideas Blog

The biggest secular holiday in the U.S. is Sunday, as noted by Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford:

No, like Halloween and Valentine’s Day, Super Sunday isn’t an official paid holiday, but let’s face it: it’s grown to become as much an accepted part of the modern American calendar as President’s Day or Memorial Day. Super Sunday is certainly far more in our consciousness than is, say, Earth Day or Veterans Day or Columbus Day. It’s left Arbor Day in the veritable dust. Why, I’d say Super Sunday has now even become a more traditional day to drink than St. Patrick’s Day. Ah, now who amongst us would have ever thought such a thing? And, at the end of the day, I’d suggest that Super Sunday is actually much more Father’s Day than is Father’s Day itself. Why don’t we just combine the two and send out cards to Daddy now?

The greater beauty of Super Sunday, though, is that it has done such a wonderful job of appropriating those more discriminating citizens who do not worship Saint Pigskin. You see, the attention paid to Super Bowl commercials and the halftime show — this year featuring Bruce Springsteen — nearly rivals that of the incidental game itself. So it’s a real big-tent holiday. Were Norman Rockwell still alive, he’d surely eschew Thanksgiving scenes and paint a typical American family fondly foregathering round the Super Bowl pre-game show.

All 17 of the most watched TV shows in history are Super Bowls. This past year, 13 of the 15 most watched network broadcasts and 14 of the 15 most watched cable broadcasts were NFL games. The average NFL game viewership is almost twice the average viewership of a new episode of a prime-time series.

But this was obvious way back in 1992, when, on the morning of the Super Bowl, Univision, one of the U.S.’ two Spanish-language channels, closed a Super Bowl special with the announcer talking about “Superrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Domingo!” (They were not referring to what the rest of the world calls “football” either.)

As Deford pointed out, the Super Bowl has grown so ginormous that even the things most fans ignore during the regular season get attention — to wit, the halftime shows (with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band featured this year) and the commercials, which have exceeded the game in entertainment value some years.

(The ultimate Super Bowl ad probably is the ad that started the trend of groundbreaking Super Bowl ads — the Apple Macintosh commercial that ran only once, during Super Bowl XVII in 1984.)

But watching the Super Bowl without a serious rooting interest is one thing. Watching the Super Bowl with your team in it — as in, say, Super Bowls I, II, XXXI and XXXII — that is something else entirely.

Flash back to Jan. 26, 1997. I was not in New Orleans, but I was in Appleton at my aunt’s house, where my wife and I, my aunt and uncle, my parents, my brother and other guests gathered to watch an event most of us probably didn’t think we’d ever see in our lifetimes. (I have seen all four Packer Super Bowls, but I was 1½ and 2½, respectively, for the first two.) This came three years after another you-didn’t-think-you’d-live-long-enough-to-see-this moments, the Wisconsin football team’s first Rose Bowl victory on New Year’s Day 1994, so there was still an air of unreality to the whole thing, which had nothing to do with the Bloody Marys and beer I consumed before the game, I’m sure.

After the Packers won, my wife and I determined that the only way to properly celebrate a potentially once-in-a-lifetime moment is to go to the biggest postgame party. So we went to Lambeau Field. Or, more accurately, we got as far as the first gas station on Lombardi Avenue, because that was far as we could get before traffic stopped.

In the midst of significant snowfall, Lombardi Avenue and the Lambeau Field parking lot were jammed with fans, many of them shirtless. (My wife said you could tell it was cold, though, because the shirtless fans were wearing hats and gloves.) At least five Lombardi Trophies marched up and down Lombardi. The game was replayed (without tackles or runs) in the parking lot. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel truck arrived to sell commemorative copies of the newspaper, and ended up giving them away because the fans swarmed the truck like fire ants around a dying insect.

Some weeks later, I got an invitation to attend the world premiere of the NFL Films Super Bowl video at UW–Green Bay’s Weidner Center. Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre weren’t there, but many other Packers were, including president Bob Harlan, defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur, defensive end Reggie White, offensive tackle Aaron Taylor, and kicker Chris Jacke, for whom this was his last official Packers function, since he departed as a free agent after the season. Twelve years after the first such public unveiling (for Super Bowl XX, at a Chicago-area sports bar), NFL Films President Steve Sabol announced that that was the largest unveiling of a Super Bowl video in NFL Films history.

This Super Bowl doesn’t have the Packers in it, but it is particularly full of stories, going all the way back to 1944, when the two franchises merged for the season, due to the World War II shortage of players. The team was informally known as “Card–Pitt,” which prompted a letter to a Pittsburgh Post–Gazette sports columnist from a Steeler fan: “Why don’t they call themselves the Car-Pits? I think it’s very appropriate as every team in the league walks over them.” And all 10 opponents did, including Green Bay, 34–7 (Don Hutson had two touchdown catches and three extra points) and 35–28 (two Hutson touchdown catches and two Paul Duhart touchdown runs).

Ken Whisenhunt, the Cardinals’ coach, was an assistant coach in Pittsburgh, but was passed over for the job in favor of Mike Tomlin, formerly the Vikings’ defensive coordinator. Whisenhunt then left for Arizona, taking many of the Steelers’ offensive and defensive strategies with him.

Unlike any Super Bowl featuring the Cowboys, there is no natural anti-rooting interest among the Steelers, an old-line NFL franchise similar to the Packers, and the Cardinals, appearing in their first Super Bowl in franchise history. (The Cardinals’ franchise started in Chicago, where they won their only NFL championship, then moved to St. Louis with the baseball Cardinals, then moved to Arizona.)

The Cardinals are the feel-good story of this NFL season and, according to Rasmussen Reports, the plurality fan favorite, even though most fans believe the Steelers will win. The Cardinals, one of the more hapless NFL franchises, improved from 5–11 in 2006 to 8–8 in 2007 to 9–7 this season. That doesn’t sound that impressive, and if you had seen the Cards play after they clinched the NFC West, you would have been even less impressed. And yet the Cardinals have picked up their play substantially in the postseason, especially on defense.

Moreover, Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, cut by the Packers back in 1994 (they were banking on this quarterback named Favre instead), is the feel-good story of this Super Bowl, much more so than indicated in the email making the e-rounds. Warner will try to become the first quarterback to lead two different teams to Super Bowl wins. (No coach has done that either.)

As for Sunday’s game, the cliché “Offense wins games; defense wins championships” is one principal reason the Steelers are favored by, as of this writing, seven points. That aphorism applies to teams, but not necessarily to the Super Bowl itself. I rated the Super Bowl participants in the 42 previous Super Bowls based on whether their teams were better known for their offense (Arizona this year) or their defense (certainly Pittsburgh). To my surprise, teams known best for their offense (including all three Packers Super Bowl champions, the San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts, to name a few) won 28 of those Super Bowls, whereas teams known best for their defense (including the Steelers, the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants) won just 14. Certainly a team with a bad defense cannot win, or even get to, a Super Bowl, but evidently, based on history, teams have to have an above average defense, but not necessarily the best in the league. (Of course, when your team is number one in scoring offense and number one in scoring defense, as the 1996–97 Packers were, your chances of winning the Super Bowl are pretty good, as long as you play in the Super Bowl as well as you did in the regular season.)

My reason for picking the Steelers is based less on the quality of their defense, then, as to the fact that they are veterans of football’s biggest stage, having won Super Bowl XL (extra large?) with their current quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, and other players. Warner is a veteran of two Super Bowls, winning XXXIV and losing XXXVI, but most of his teammates aren’t. Super Bowl newcomers usually lose, unless they’re playing another Super Bowl newcomer. That's not the case this year, so while I'll be rooting for the Cardinals, I'm picking the Steelers, whose defense in the postseason has been as good as it was in the regular season.