Screw the big game: Let's watch cricket!

When the former NFL-AFL championship game took on the hyperbolic name of the Super Bowl, the NFL instantly put a greater emphasis on the importance of the game. There is a greater sense of spectacle, and yes, a greater pressure to deliver a more magnificent game than any other major championship. Mind you, it was not just the name that did this, or even the more definite one-game end to football's season rather than the seven-game series in the three other major sports. Super Bowl III, the first championship game under the "Super Bowl" moniker, was only super because Joe Namath guaranteed victory over Johnny Unitas and the heavily-favored Colts, setting a precedent for the following thirty-two big games. And all this was for a game that was actually rainy and somewhat boring.

COURTESY SUPERBOWL.COM

Oh, I'm sorry, did you actually believe that the Super Bowl was meant to be the best football game of the year? Well, simple mathematics makes it unlikely, if not quite impossible, for this to happen. Even last year's Super Bowl, proclaimed the best ever by Sports Illustrated (a pronouncement that seems to come once every three years) actually started with a very dull first half. In fact, only five of the last 20 Super Bowls were decided by seven points or fewer. Not surprisingly, four out of those five (XXIII, XXV, XXXII, and XXXIV) were declared the greatest ever by Sports Illustrated. The fact that Sports Illustrated is this desperate to proclaim a greatest Super Bowl ever in these 20 years is less the fault of overzealous reporters as a statement on the status of the big game. Face it—most of the time, it sucks.

But Super Bowl XXXV— ready your hyperboles, SI— could be the worst one yet. No, it will not be a 55-10 rout like Super Bowl XXIV, and it will probably be a close game unless the Ravens manage to put it away with five straight safeties, since neither team has shown any consistent ability to produce points. Super Bowl XXXV will be a terrible game because in an age of almost total parity, exciting teams are not that good, and the dull, plodding, defensive-minded teams America will watch on Sunday are not much better. In today's NFL, fortunes change so quickly that the teams that produced last year's thrilling big game, the Rams and Titans, could not win a single playoff game. Daunte Culpepper and Rich Gannon, two multidimensional and explosive quarterbacks were crushed by the trench warfare of the Giants and Ravens defenses. Do you remember the NFL advertisements asking athletes, "Show Me Something"? It seems they've all politely declined.

What we are left with is an even, but dull, matchup between defense and more defense, between New York's second-favorite football team and Cleveland's least favorite team, and between (excuse me while I laugh hysterically) Kerry Collins versus Trent Dilfer. Sure, Tony Eason and Stan Humphries quarterbacked the '85 Patriots and '94 Chargers into the Super Bowl, so there is some history of sorry quarterbacks in the Super Bowl. Nevertheless, assuming Collins' performance against the Vikings was something of a football solar eclipse, there have never been two such terrible quarterbacks pitted against each other in a championship game. With no Joe Namath, Joe Montana or even Kurt Warner to watch, which offensive stars do we have to pay attention to, exactly? Qadry Ismail and Armani Toomer running for 80-yard passes their quarterbacks can't possibly throw? Tiki Barber and Jamal Lewis always falling backwards after hitting two brick-wall run defenses?

Even in blowout Super Bowls of the past, there was at least one super event, like Steve Young's six touchdown passes, Marcus Allen's 200-plus rushing yards, and of course William "Refrigerator" Perry's dive into the end zone. In an NFL that is depleted to the point that two one-dimensional teams are playing for the Vince Lombardi trophy, however, Super Bowls are no longer Super. Even if it is true that defense win championships, the thought of watching excellent defense play middling offense will not win back the NFL's fading viewership. The undeserving Ravens will beat the undeserving Giants, and hopefully neither the dull teams nor memories of the dull game will be back next year.

That is the sad state of the NFL and the super game that rarely deserves its glorified title. Graphic courtesy Superbowl.com.

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