The XXXIInd Super Bowl

by David Fleitz

The first Super Bowl was played in January 1967. It wasn't even called the "Super Bowl" then; it was known as the "AFL-NFL Championship Game", which doesn't quite trip off the tongue as nicely. Now, in January (almost February) 1998, the thirty-second Super Bowl will be played between the Green Bay Packers and the Denver Broncos, and I would like to make one request: Lose those ridiculous Roman numerals. Baseball didn't play World Series XLIII last fall. Why does football need this fakey, pretentious numbering system usually reserved for kings and popes? I have a theory, as I usually do. I think that in the 1960s, when baseball ruled as the undisputed Number One on America's sports pages, football felt that it needed a touch of pomp and grandeur. Baseball owns a much longer history and even a mythology that football didn't have, and still doesn't. So the NFL tried to get some of it artificially. They couldn't call the game played in Miami on January 14, 1969, merely "the 1969 Super Bowl" or even "Super Bowl 3". They did what bad movies do. They tried to add some false pomposity to the event. Look at the credits to some horrible film and you'll see "Copyright MCMXLVII", as if the atrocity on screen somehow deserved to be some kind of timeless epic chiseled in stone for all eternity or something. Like Pauly Shore harkens back to Caesar, perhaps. Football, which is more of a spectacle than baseball, uses Roman numerals to make itself seem a little more spectacular than it really is. It's sad that of the 31 previous Super Bowls, no more than three or four (sorry, I mean III or IV) have been memorable in any way. And, it shouldn't be surprising that so many of the worst Super Bowl games have gotten huge TV ratings. Look at a list of the highest-rated TV programs of all time and what do we find? Super Bowls, Bob Hope specials (Bob hasn't been funny at all since about 1958) and Miss America pageants (do people still pay attention to that sad display of warped values?) People love spectacle, even mediocre spectacle, or else they wouldn't buy those "Lord of the Dance" tapes. From now on, when I write about the game played on January 25, 1998, I'll call it "Super Bowl 32". So, who do you like in World Series XLIV?