The Super Bowl is the closest thing we have to a national office party. Not a classy party either with a private room in the back of a restaurant or an after-hours shindig with spouses.
The Super Bowl is more like a low-budget office party that takes place during normal business hours so that it seems like leisure time, but you really aren’t free to leave.
Instead, everyone stands around the conference room table avoiding eye contact and stabbing room-temperature cheese dip with Tostitos Multigrain scoops.
I’m talking about one of those eye-rollingly-themed parties where the paper plates are shaped like footballs and the napkins are patterned like referee shirts.
Even though only two metropolitan fan bases have an emotional stake in the outcome, Super Bowl Sunday has taken on national significance.
Watching the Super Bowl when your team isn’t in it feels like being forced to sing Happy Birthday to a co-worker while watching them blow out candles on a cake. Sure, you still get to eat cake, but it’s so much more fun when you’re the one spitting on everyone else’s piece.
Watching the Super Bowl no longer feels optional. It is a mandatory part of active citizenship, like registering to vote or lying to get out of jury duty. We all participate, but it isn’t always fun.
At best, the average viewer has a tenuous connection to the teams, the broadcast always goes on for far too long, and it always takes place on a school night.
Like office parties, a Super Bowl party can also reveal painful differences between generations as neither can relate to each other. Why do old people always bring the conversation back to Johnny Unitas? And since I stopped playing video games years ago, I can’t name a single player on any team.
My football knowledge is stuck in the 1990s generational middle where Dan Marino endorses Isotoner Gloves, Steve Young is a Mormon hero in a very un-Mormon town, and the most important thing about kicking field goals is to keep the laces out.
Even with my dated football knowledge and lack of pop culture awareness, there’s always something I can find to relate to during the Super Bowl.
Perhaps what I’m most grateful for is that it will dominate our conversations throughout the week giving us a break from things like politics and the weather. Even our pleasantries will change to make way for the Super Bowl. Somewhere around Wednesday, “How’s it going?” will be replaced with “Planning to watch the game?”, which itself will be replaced by “Did you see the game?” first thing Monday morning.
Super Bowl mania will also dominate social media from kickoff on Twitter through Tuesday on Facebook. It amuses me how many of my friends haven’t yet figured out the Facebook algorithm and still post real-time comments. “Nice tackle!” doesn’t pack quite the same punch when I finally see it in my feed on Monday afternoon.
Like an office, the Super Bowl brings people of all stripes together. I won’t be going to any Super Bowl parties this year, which suits me fine.
I like the idea of parties far more than the reality. Like most people, my favorite parts of a conversation are the ones when I’m talking.
But I struggle with social timing at sports-related parties. Watching sports is one of the last remaining excuses for mentally-balanced individuals to scream spontaneous utterances in a social setting. It can be very distracting.
Say, for example, that you’re asking a friend how he is adjusting to life since his mother passed away. If he answers with something like, “We’re taking it one day a time. Dad can’t figure out the stove and almost set the house on fire and the kids keep asking when they’ll next see Nana,” it’s very hard to pick the conversation back up after the guy next to you screams “let’s see some defense on the field!?”
In fairness, a Super Bowl party might not be the best time to talk about the impacts of grief, but that is really the host’s fault for planning a social gathering based around a televised event. Especially one where everyone gets shushed during the commercial breaks.
When is a guy supposed to catch up with the friend-of-a-friend you sort of once knew if you’re not allowed to talk during the game or the commercials? Maybe next Tuesday on Facebook.
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