TimesFour

(Disclaimer: the following article was written by a life-long Chicago Bears fan who did his patriotic duty and watched the Super Bowl anyway. His unbalanced remarks follow.)

So, I’m watching the Fox Sports broadcast of Super Bowl 45 (I don’t do Roman numerals. No one does Roman numerals, not even current Romans…but I digress.).

The first thing I noticed was that there was this crowd of poor, poor saps who actually paid coin of the realm to stand outside the stadium while the game was going on inside.

Seriously.

Super Bowl 45

The only dumber way to separate a fool and his money insists upon calling itself “multi-level marketing.” Somewhere, Bernie Madoff just slapped himself in the forehead.

I don’t remember anyone standing outside of Ford Field in Detroit a few years ago, mostly because Ford Field is surrounded by, y’know, Detroit. Apparently, the game was held there because Afghanistan was booked that weekend…but I digress again.

(I’ll be doing that a lot, by the way…digressing. Just so you know. Drinking lots of alcohol while watching one’s least favorite team romp in the Super Bowl results in a lot of digressing.)

So, anyway, I’m watching the pre-game nonsense, when Sam Elliott shows up and starts talking (expletive deleted) Green Bay Packers (the author pauses to spit) football. I knew it was going to be a baaaad day when, over a video clip of Jay Cutler(notes) being sacked, Elliott says, “Players who never quit.”

Ouch, babe.

Speaking of which, I did like that one Super Bowl ad where Bono was begging for a dollar a week to help those poor African kids with the grade 2 MCL sprains. (“Their limps could become noticeable any day now! We’ve got to help!”) But I digress again.

Speaking of digressions, can we finally just stop getting pop singers to sing the National Anthem? Aren’t there any nice, fat opera singers out there that can, you know, hit a note without the aid of a computer? Ever since Marvin Gaye did as genius is wont to do and reworked a standard with his own unique spin, all we’ve had is a long, ugly procession of pop singers giving us performances that wouldn’t make it past Paula Abdul on her most forgiving day (pre-crack Whitney Houston’s brilliant standard notwithstanding, of course). And is it too much to ask that the singers…wait for it…learn the friggin’ words? How is it that I can watch a week of hockey and know the anthem for the People’s Republic of Canada better than my own? Why do I cringe whenever a singer starts with “Oh, say, can you seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
CelineDionMariahCareyChristinaAguileraBeyonceWholeLottaNotesThatAin’tInTheSong-eee?”

Or maybe it’s just me.

Then, just before kickoff, I had an actual attack of conscience: who to pull for?

Normally, my favorite two teams in the league are my beloved Bears and whoever is playing the (expletive) Packers (spit), but this time, I found myself somewhat hesitant to just wave my Terrible Towel blindly.

Not quite a year ago, Ben Roethlisberger(notes) was accused of sexual malfeasance for the second time. As I’ve previously opined, getting so accused once is bad enough. Getting accused twice defies logic. Normal, everyday people aren’t twice accused of doing something that out of the ordinary. I see you back there, Mr. Due Process, and you can Shut. Up. Two different incidents, two different women, two different times, two different places…let’s just say that there’s a lot that never came to light.

So, even with Omar Epps coaching the Steelers (come on, it was that or Will i. am), I couldn’t get with them.

Which left the (expletive) Packers (spit).

There is not a lone fiber of my being that will allow me to ever, ever cheer for the (expletive) Packers (spit). Ever since George Halas and Curley Lambeau fell out over Lambeau’s growing obsession with Scientology*, these two franchises have feuded.

As I could not pull for either team, I elected to pull for “tie.”

Then (expletive) Green Bay (spit) ran out to an 18-point lead before I could wrap my head around those godawful Groupon commercials.

Since no team has ever come back from an 18-point deficit in the history of the Super Bowl, I began reconciling myself to the fact that the Lombardi trophy was headed back to 1265 Lombardi Avenue. Sure, Pittsburgh made it close, but that’s all they were going to do. Whatever else (expletive) Green Bay (spit) might be, they are possessed of Aaron Rodgers(notes), and he’s just too good to let an 18-point lead go away.

Against my better nature, I must also admit that this team has real sand. Losing Charles Woodson(notes) and Donald Driver(notes) in the first half might have done in the Bears a lesser team, but not this one. Dom Capers didn’t call off the dogs on defense, and Mike McCarthy didn’t suddenly become Chuck Knox on offense. They plugged in whoever was next on the depth chart and told them to go out and play like Charles Woodson and Donald Driver for 30 minutes.

It must be nice to have capable backups when starters go down to injury…but I digress again.

So, the (expletive) Packers (spit) are the champions of the NFL, again, huzzah, huzzah. They will go into an off-season of doubt and labor acrimony secure in the fact that whenever football is next played, they’ll be defending a championship. Meanwhile, my beloved Bears will be forced to endure all that “World Champion (expletive) Packers (spit)” crap because they let them come into Soldier Field and leave with the only available NFC invitation to the Super Bowl. Here’s hoping they rally ’round 50-Cent Cutler** and Mike Martz, because a couple of division wins over them next season would go a long way to soothing the sting.

Finally, a bit of perspective: 25 years ago, my beloved Bears won the Super Bowl.

Since then, the Soviet Union has collapsed, the internet was born, sheep have been cloned, GPS will find you wherever you are, Auto Tune was invented (but not originally for singing), cellular phones shrank in size yet grew in versatility (so much so that one is hard-pressed to simply find a plain phone anymore), the Euro became more than Monopoly money, NASA put a vehicle on Mars, the Hubble telescope was launched, the Democrats ran the two worst opponents at George W. Bush in the long, sad history of bad political opponents (seriously…Al Gore and John Kerry was the best y’all could do?), cameras went digital, televisions went plasma, music got reduced to flash mp3 files, two films won as many Oscars as “Ben Hur” once did, Limp Bizkit’s entire career happened, a black man got elected president of the United States…

…and the (expletive) Packers (spit) have won two Super Bowls.

Ain’t life grand?

* – No, Curley Lambeau was never a Scientologist. I made that up. Actually, I made up most of the article, which included fact, fiction, repartee, humor, irony, and other forms of sophistry. For those of you who couldn’t tell the difference, here’s the short version: your team won the Super Bowl, and I’m bitter about it.

** – Why 50-Cent Cutler? Because you can only get two quarters out of him…