Super Bowl Sunday: A Quiet Spectator’s Reflection
The Joy of Shared Focus, Unexpected Discoveries, and the Magic of Collective Energy
Saturday morning now, family playing cards on the living room floor, a grey Pacific Northwest day. My heart is full and spilling over at the joy of hanging out with my beloveds. Last Sunday I wrote about my experience of the Super Bowl. Funny how quickly events come and go but I’ll post it out for your entertainment, all the same. The Philadelphia Eagles won, in case you missed it!.
Super Bowl Sunday
It’s early evening, dark and just 1 degree Celsius above freezing here on Super Bowl Sunday in Skagit County. [That’s roughly 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Thanks to those who sent me a rough calculation after the post before last.]. Let me say, straight away I am the least qualified person on earth to write about the Super Bowl if you are looking for intelligent commentary on the game, the outcome or the stakes. Not only am I totally clueless about American football, watching sport plays little to no part in my life these days. I come from a family of avid sports fans and was married to a die hard Liverpool and Leicester City fan for twenty years. But nowadays, our life is free of sports commentary. I am particularly unqualified to write about the big match because I only lasted until just after half time. I’m now snug in bed listening to some soothing jazz writing this Substack!
However, Super Bowl Sunday is a big deal. A really big deal and my husband has great memories of watching it first with his parents and then with friends over the years, so we decided to watch together.
Things that aren’t my passion fascinate me, as I can observe others caught up in something they love. We fired up the monitor just in time for kick off, at 3.30pm here on the west coast. Snacks at the ready, we saw some of the opening acts including the sublime John Baptiste playing the National Anthem. The match came from New Orleans. There was a moving tribute to those who recently lost their lives in an attack in New Orleans, the fires in LA, floods in North Carolina and the plane crashes in Washington DC. Kendrick Lamar was the first ever solo rapper to headline the halftime entertainment with a grand show of dancers in red, white and blue. A Substack search on Kendrick Lamar throws up some great analysis of the performance with post titles such as ‘Kendrick Lamar and the Quantum Mind’ by Bian Li at The Regenerative Mind.
Hundreds and thousands of dollars are gambled during the Super Bowl. It is the second biggest food consumption day after Thanksgiving. We can attest to this, as grocery stores were busy and carts were laden with snacks and sample vendors were pitching their wares as perfect Super Bowl snack food.
A prose poem of NFL team names
This year the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles. I love stories behind names so looked up how NFL teams got their names. It turns out over half the teams in the NFL ran local surveys or used focus groups to choose a name. Others were named by the owners. Just reading aloud the names is a wonderful slice of American popular culture and even for a non sport loving Brit, they conjure something magical:
Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets, Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars Tenessee Titans, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Chargers, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Commanders, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, and our local team, Seattle Seahawks.
They provide a wonderfully evocative geography and history lesson of this vast nation: the steelworks in Pittsburgh, the people who flocked to San Francisco and California in the gold rush of 1849, the ranchers of Texas. If the Kansas City Chiefs win it will create an historic triple win of the Super Bowl Lombardi trophy designed by Tiffany & Co.. Something no team has achieved in modern times.
Sport broadcast as theatre
Long years of hearing British football pundits extoll the expected and actual highlights and lowlights of a game before and after a match has left me with little appetite for such viewing. Yet this afternoon I saw the theatre of it all. The huge stadium, the opening acts and the adverts. Families and friends coming together. Sport, entertainment, music, community and a proud tradition. Some feel it is unrepresentative of American life for a whole variety of reasons yet I was left wondering, does that matter? Anywhere people come together and focus on the same thing, there is a concentration of energy (for good or ill). There is something mysterious and magical in that confluence.
Super Bowl Sunday adverts generate their own fans, rather like some Christmas adverts in the UK. I recognised Tom Cruise delivering a rousing monologue about the historic nature of this match with plenty of references to the ‘mission’ for each team. This broadcast adjacent to an action packed trailer for the latest Mission Impossible film release coming soon. Plenty of big name celebrities feature in the ads, Snoop Dog, Seal, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene, Dan and Sarah Levy and in the crowd, I spotted Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and Kevin Costner amongst others.
Though the game is live, play stops for commercial breaks which happen frequently. I learnt the NFL (The National Football League) funds many youth programmes and promotes diversity, equality and inclusion.
As for the game. Well, what can I tell you? There is passing, kicking and tackling. It isn’t rugby nor football (soccer) as played in the UK. There are head guards and shoulder pads. The finer points pass me by.
It’s a joy and a privilege to be a guest here and get the chance to experience my corner of this vast country, diverse culture and warm community as an observer and participant.
Threads that pull me
I’m curious about where we pay attention and what’s possible when we do that more deliberately, with others.
Where do you join with others and jointly give your attention to something? What’s your sense of that? What does it give you and others?
Where could you more consciously create opportunities for shared focus? On music, cooking, hanging out, working on a project, something else?
If you tend to be a loner, what other ways could you tap into collective energies to amplify your experience in ways that benefit you and the whole?
Links
More fun facts about the Super Bowl
Gratitude and Joy
Thanks to
for the inspiration to start a Joy Calendar ‘where instead of writing down work meetings and doctor’s appointments, I write down the tiny, beautiful things that make up a life.’ Beautiful idea. ‘Never get used to the miracles’ is something Mavis Karn says. It’s so easy to hang out in the past or future when right here, right now, there is the miracle of being alive.That’s all folks. Thank you for reading. As always, press the little heart if you enjoyed the post or found it thought provoking. It encourages me to write more. A restack with your thoughts on the post, helps reach a wider audience and a comment or direct message is very welcome. I love to know what tickles you or gets you wondering.
‘Til next time
Juliet Fay