Superhype season: the making of Super Bowl 1997

It was early January, and I was just settling down to watch what promised to be — on paper, as the oddsmakers say — a great playoff game between the Forty-Niners and the Packers. Suddenly, commentator Dick Stockton’s stentorian tones could be heard around my living room: “It was destiny that the Forty-niners would meet the Packers again.” And if invoking a pagan fate were not enough, Stockton went on to suggest that the Forty-niners were “looking for redemption.”

I must confess it hadn’t occurred to me even once that morning that I would soon be viewing the most epic encounter since Ulysses battled the Cyclops, a contest for which Homer did the play by play.

I have often thought that such histrionics probably don’t sit well with the fan who enjoys the game even if — and perhaps because — the future of Western civilization is not at stake. For the true fan, metaphors from the world of war, religion, and politics only corrupt the sport. Indeed, nothing symbolizes the corruption of sports and the triviliazation of our politics more than the easy way we slide rhetorically from one to the other. Politics becomes nothing more than a game in which the sole interest lies in who wins and loses.

Sports, on the other hand, becomes one of our rare occasions or metaphors for serious social discourse. For those of a conservative bent, there was NBC commentator Phil Simms’ celebration of Jacksonville coach Tom Coughlin’s my-way-or-the-highway style of coaching. Presumably Coughlin turned the baby Jaguars into winners, while Mike Shannahan’s laxer discipline allowed the veteran Broncos to become unduly relaxed.

Occasionally, even subversive ideas creep into sports broadcasting, but they are hermetically isolated from any potential theater of political action. During this month’s playoffs, viewers heard the quaint story of Green Bay fans’ public ownership of the Packers and the reciprocal loyalty between town and team this arrangement fostered. Unfortunately, few sportscasters even speculate on what municipal ownership of other sports franchises might mean. And no one asks whether Green Bay’s working class fans should own the town’s meatpacking plants and papermills so that these businesses might be equally anchored to the community.

That football as world historic drama may irritate or distract the real fan is of little consequence to the networks. He or she has little option. Hype serves the essential purpose of boosting ratings. It persuades at least a few of the marginally curious that this is where the important social or cultural action is happening. As any casual viewer of Sunday football can attest, the purpose of televising the game is to sell products to as many people as possible.

Televised football is now wall to wall commercials. When once we were given starting line-ups, now we have “the DieHard starting lineup.” Halftime highlights and instant replays are often sponsored, while commercial blimps fly over the stadiums. Commericals have migrated well beyond such conventional spots as halftimes and team-called time-outs. The young fan probably doesn’t even realize that more than 10 minutes have been added to the game by mandatory “TV time-outs.” Often these occur at key spots in the game, as after fumbles and interceptions. Vince Lombardi, a Packer coach who would surely have resented the way these mandatory spots disrupt the flow of the game, has himself been turned into a commercial icon by Nike.

During the Super Bowl, these added time-outs will mean many millions in revenues to Fox. It is little wonder that the game is so heavily hyped. What is surprising is that most Super Bowls are more memorable for the new ads displayed than the quality of the football. Two weeks are devoted to the cottage industry of hyping the game in local and national media. More reporters cover the Super Bowl than routinely follow Congress or the president. With mandatory participation by the players in nauseating daily interviews, only those with heroic temperaments could concentrate on the game. Let’s hope the Packers and Patriots can rise to this Olympian challenge.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor.