Sunday, February 7, 2010

Semi-Super Thoughts on Super Bowl Sunday

I have prepared for the big day by chilling some very good Quebec beer: Blanche de Chambly.  It is kind of orange-y like Blue Moon but with none of the Coors-related guilt.

Anyhow, some thoughts on the day/game:
  • Super Bowl Sunday gets more play up here in Canada than the Grey Cup--the finale of the Canadian Football League.  Why is that?  Is it the dominance of the American media?  Is it my selective attention? Or is that the NFL has the best football players so attention naturally focuses on the best?
  • The big downside of living up here during the game, as I have mentioned before, is that we get mostly Canadian commercials.  Not only does this mean that we have to burn time watching the new, over-produced but slightly more imaginative ones on the net, but it means that the commercials during the game are super-boring.  As in the same Canadian Tire (think Sears/Target/K-Mart) commercials that have already been over-played for months.  Since Canada is a small media market and since Montreal's English community is extremely so, it seems that only a few companies buy commercial time slots.  So, we often get exactly the same ad three or four times in a given half hour.  Yuck.  
  • On the other hand, we are not digging out from a big snowstorm.
  • I am avoiding all of the pre-game, as I do every year.  I have watched enough games and read enough online that the stuff presented today would be mere over-dose.  
  • I am rooting for the Saints, as many are, because New Orleans could use any and all breaks it can get.  Indianapolis has not faced a major disaster lately.  Plus the Saints have never made it this far.  The Colts have been here.
  • Indeed, I am also rooting against the Colts.  Why?  Because of my old ties to Baltimore (many of my friends at summer camp hailed from Baltimore and I went to bed every night to the sounds of Orioles games).  I remember when the team snuck out of town in the middle of the night (as depicted in the 30 for 30 documentary that I have yet to see). The Colts are not the only team to have moved, despite being popular, but it was one of the sleaziest moves in the history of American sports.  Yes, it is a long time ago, but sports resentments are easy to hold on to.  Plus I am an NFC guy.

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