It is almost impossible to avoid the Super Bowl Hype Machine. I do my best to avoid ESPN, the sports page, sports talk radio, and all newscasts but it still seeps in nonetheless. There are a few items for this upcoming weekend I feel need your attention.
1) Every single talking head, ex-player, and so-called expert is talking like the Giants have already won this game. This flies directly in the face of the fact that the Patriots are actually favored by three points. The Super Bowl attracts an estimated $10 billion dollars wagered on the game itself. Anything with $10 billion dollars attached is going to have a shocking amount of misinformation attached to it. What about Gronkowski and his foot? How can the Giants defensive line be stopped? Is Eli Manning the greatest QB of our era? This is all bullshit used to fill media space. Vegas knows. They always know. They like New England, and so do I.
The line right now is New England -3. We will see a ton of New York money drop that number to -2.5 in the next three days (i.e. under a field goal), and that’s the way to go. I will repeat the mantra again and again. If everyone in America thinks something will happen, they are dead wrong. They are always wrong. Take New England, and wait until you get that -2.5.
2) Madonna is doing the halftime show. While she will look better than Pete Townshend and his pasty gut flowing over his slacks last year, she will still have the air of someone trying to be relevant and more Lady Gaga than Lady Gaga. This is confusing as Lady Gaga is trying to be more Madonna than Madonna. Regardless, halftime will be an excellent opportunity to hit the crapper and expel the horrible food you have eaten at your Super Bowl party.
3) Super Bowl Sunday is the single largest caloric intake day in the average American’s calendar year. That is impressive when you think of all the crap you eat at Thanksgiving. The key is to eat enough snacks to keep yourself in the ball game and soak up all that beer you are drinking. If you find yourself at a Super Bowl party serving anything but beer, pizza, wings, chili, and chips you should leave immediately. I went to a party once where the woman changed the channel to “Sex and the City” at 9pm, and I saw the Patriots kick the game winner on a 10 inch black and white in her dead father’s back bedroom with two other pissed off dudes. I should have known better when I saw the crab puffs.
4) If you are going to nestle in and get down to it, make a wise beer choice. Super Bowl Sunday is no time to try to be a hero. Leave the “Boris The Crusher” 10.5% alcohol content stout at home. You need something you can fire back with regularity, and walk back and forth to the kitchen to retrieve shouting out “Fucking Brady! How the fuck did he miss that wide open fucking fuck!” I made some big mistakes on beer choices in the late Eighties and early 90s that have left me with huge voids in my sports memory banks. For example, did you know the Giants beat Denver in the 1987 Super Bowl? I didn’t. I vaguely remember buying a 12 pack of Elephant Malt Liquor that afternoon, but the game itself escapes me. Tecate, Pacifico, Bud Light, or the traditional Budweiser are all good choices here.
5) The commercials will be disappointing. They always are. Why companies choose to spend millions of dollars trying to entertain the audience for thirty seconds instead of selling them their actual product is beyond me. Ego of the company heads I guess. When you hear about everyone “rating” the commercials the next day, don’t pay attention. Those vapid hosts on the Today show don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. The only thing that matters is if that company sold more product. That’s how you determine if that commercial was a “winner”.
6) The game will not live up to the hype. It never does.
But we're always hoping for a real good game.
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