Oh hell, maybe I’m just getting snarkier and snarkier with time, but that Super Bowl sucked. It was a sloppy game on a sloppy field with nary a single commercial that I found even slightly amusing. B-O-R-I-N-G.
While I never miss a Super Bowl, I was especially interested in this game just because of its religious undertones. You’ll recall, for example, that both the owner and the coach of the Indianapolis Colts declared after winning the AFC championship game that it was God’s and Jesus’ plans to get the Colts to the big game.
So to my snarky mind, that meant God and Jesus were rooting against the Chicago Bears. And how much fun could it be to see a team like da-Bears face not only Peyton Manning and his fleety little receivers but also the wrath of God? Well, as it turns out, not much.
God apparently wanted them all to be very, very clean since he showered them with rain the entire game. Or was that Joe Biden’s doing? Damn, I’m getting all fucking confused.
Other than the opening kick-off return by the devilish Bears, these guys didn’t have a – well – prayer. Or, if you’d rather, they sucked. Their quarterback, Rex Grossman, is stuck in some kind of college day haze, getting chunkier with each party and apparently forgetting that he’s playing professionals now.
Football fans will probably remember a month or so ago when he absolutely sucked in a game and then declared that he was partying too much the week before and didn’t prepare too well. Cool. Well, actually, not cool. Not at least, if you’re a fly-by-night agnostic Colt-hating bastard like I was last night.
But it was just a terrible game all around. Both teams played as miserable as the weather was, Prince played by the rules at his half-time show (read: he was boring), and, unless you think it’s funny for crabs to bow to beer cans, there wasn’t a clever commercial in the four-hour bonanza.
Yep: It’s bah-fucking-humbug here. But like the sucker I am, my buddies and I watched it all, slurped down the necessary beers, chowed on an obscene amount of chips and then felt really, really stupid when it was all over. In fact, even though I’ve known these guys for years, the feeling in the room as we headed for the door was like that of a really, really bad first date. You just want to get the fuck out the door and pretend the previous four hours just didn’t exist.
But the Christians are happy today. The Colts’ owner, Jim Irsay, and their coach, Tony Dungy, got all the God and Jesus praising they could into the post-game ceremony. Dungy, when asked how it felt to be the first black coach of an NFL championship team, responded with something like this: “Well, I’m more proud of the fact that I’m a Christian coach and I coach the Lord’s way.”
Give me a fucking break. Amen.
Like I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, if there is a God, let’s hope she’s not wasting her goddamn time rooting for a football team when people are starving, being killed by presidential tyrants and/or just plain being abused by life’s many (real) pitfalls. I mean, there’s got to be a Christian with a brain out there who feels more than a bit squeamish over this “God is for my team” crap, no? But where are they?
The good news is that it’s over. And now we can all turn our attention toward the upcoming baseball season and hope like hell that God hates the Red Sox as much as he hates the Bears. Curt Schilling is a Republican, you know? And he’s thinking about running against John Kerry for the U.S. Senate.
And off we go into a brand new sports spectacle….
