As I am in New Orleans to broadcast the Super Bowl for BBC television, I recorded an audio essay for the BBC World Service's Weekend programme, for whom I have been a studio guest a number of times. It was broadcast between 7-9 this morning; if you can access the World Service online, you can probably find it, but if you can't, here's my original script. I don't know if the recording was then edited down, and I have added one line to it as well, but this is a look at the Super Bowl aimed at a worldwide audience assumed to know very little indeed about it...
Forget Thanksgiving,
Christmas Day, or even the Fourth of July—Super Bowl Sunday may be
America's biggest holiday—at least it's the day when more Americans
indulge themselves, at the same time, in their REAL national pastime,
watching television.
At 6:25 Eastern more
than 45 per cent of the country will turn on the Super Bowl, the
championship game of the National Football League. At halftime,
reservoir levels will drop all across the country as millions of
people flush simultaneously. The real audience is probably bigger
than the television ratings show—because people watch together,
with families, at parties, in bars, & the possibility of reaching
some 160 million or more viewers means a 30 second commercial during
the game costs $4 million. The three networks who rotate broadcasting
the Super Bowl reap a revenue bonanza that more than justifies their
three years covering the regular season without the championship
game.
The adverts themselves
become must-see items. Audiences anticipate mock football matches
between puppies or beer bottles with almost as much enthusiasm as
they do the real thing. For those not crazy about football there's
the pregame show—with Alicia Keys, and the halftime show—a 40
minute extravaganza starring Beyonce. Bookies are offering bets on
everything from what colour Beyonce's hair will be, or whether Keyes'
version of the National Anthem will run over or under 2 mins 15
seconds, to even the score of the game itself.
Oh yes, the game. It
matches the Baltimore Ravens, named after Edgar Allen Poe's poem and
coached by John Harbaugh, against the San Francisco 49ers, named
after the 19th century gold rush and coached by John's
little brother Jim. As far as the media is concerned, it's
Harbaughgeddon! ...no sibling rivalry since Cain and Abel's will have
been discussed in such depth by more people so unqualified to analyse
it!
That's because there are 5,000 media covering one game, and they
have little else to talk about. On media day, Tuesday, hundreds of
them descended on the players scattered at podiums around the
stadium, all trying to ask a question so ridiculous no one else will
have thought of it before. TV Azteca sent a woman reporter dressed in
very little at all, insuring only that many American males can now
name Mexico's second-biggest network. For the rest of the week the
media talk only to each other and any ex-player with a story to tell
or something to sell. They wander around the media center looking to
add to the din of a hundreds of hosts shouting into the vast void of
sports talk radio.
Or they talk about the
miracle of New Orleans and its recovery. The city has always been
America's most exotic, but during super bowl week it becomes a theme
park, a kind of santizied version of mardi gras, the excesses of
football replacing the somewhat wilder excess of Fat Tuesday. Large
portions of the French quarter have been taken over by television
networks, meaning Jackson Square, right opposite the French Market
and Cafe du Monde, is now off-limits to anyone not wearing broadcast
credentials and makeup.
There are other
stories: will the Ravens Ray Lewis retire at 37 with a second
championship ring? Did he use New Zealand deer antler velvet extract
to help heal a torn biceps? Deer antler velvet; I am not making this up. Oddly enough, when a former 49er, tackle
Kwame Harris, was arrested back in San Francisco this week after a
restaurant scuffle with his boyfriend, it re-triggered an ongoing
controversy over the acceptance of gay players in America's most
macho game. And how will the league address the growing issue of
concussions and brain damage, especially considering this Super Bowl
matches two teams known for their physicality, in a game not known
for lacking it.
Finally, however, the game will kick off, and, despite frequent
breaks for commercials and Beyonce, America's eyes will be focussed
on the field. Which Harbaugh will triumph? In a game that generates
gold, to the extent that they award the winner's trophy not to a player, but to the team's owner, it may be the gold rush 49ers, and brother Jim, who win in the end.
