What a Super Bowl. The game literally game down tot he last minute after several momentum swings throughout the game. With an acrobatic catch on the ground and a few interceptions, football doesn’t get much better than that.
Of course, I was largely neutral and only slightly favoring the Seahawks, so barring a total blowout, I would be hard to disappoint. Apologies to the Seahawks fans out there for the disappointment. Even more apologies to those around Seahawks fans who have listened continuously about Pete Carroll’s poor playcalling, where Marshawn Lynch didn’t get the ball on the 1 yard line. I know how it feels. I was at Big Game 2009, where we threw an interception in the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown when we had a running back averaging almost 7 yards a carry. It happens.
While I’m at it, sorry to those around Patriots fans as well. Following Ballghazi/Deflategate, I think we all understand what sore winners are like as well. Or so my east coast friends have claimed based on their Facebook feeds with endless Patriots-related posts. You also have my sympathy: my Facebook is strongly Texas-biased, and for 2 years, my Facebook feed could have been mistaken for a Johnny Manziel biography.
Sadly, I missed watching the Super Bowl with friends at home while hypocritically harassing my very international coworkers to find a party themselves to truly understand American culture. I spent my weekend under several inches of snow, some of which came at me sideways. It took less than 15 seconds and a 20 foot walk from a cab to the hotel entry for me to conclude that I would never live in Chicago.
Due to the forbidding weather conditions and excellent use of Marriott membership by my traveling companion, I watched the game in the hotel lounge with endless wings, tortilla chips, bean dip, and carrot sticks. And an open bar. Fun fact: I gave up my label of being mostly vegetarian.
Less fun fact: I still don’t drink, but I did let loose and drink some ginger ale and sierra mist. Out of glass bottles.
Anyways, I watched the game with a bunch of older, female librarians. The crowd was mostly rooting for the Seahawks. One was a hardcore Bears fan, so I guess she like me doesn’t really have a team.
At first, it was strange. Having gone to library conferences for several years, I have met many librarians, and they largely fit the stereotype. They look like the people who would “shh” you in a library, and not so much the people I would laugh about a Kim Kardashian commercial with. But it turns out they’re pretty normal. We cheered and booed and commentated on the games and commercials. I would talk about the 2008 Super Bowl, and I would hear about the 1985 Super Bowl. Despite not being asked my age, they rightly determined I wasn’t even born yet and gave me a hard time about it. When the 50 Shades of Grey trailer came up, I heard about an apparently wonderful discussion one library had and the local controversy it caused. In return, I explained the economics of mobile games and how they could afford Liam Neeson and multiple commercials.
Were it not for the weather and free food, I would never have picked to watch the game with librarians, but it ended up being a lot of fun. I never got any of their names, but we were so familiar and casual that it would have seemed awkward to introduce ourselves and point out that we didn’t actually know each other. There’s a lot wrong with our sports culture, but it is an institution and shared experience that cuts across all ideologies and communities. There’s some comfort in the absurdity and depth of our passions for some event that ultimately has no bearing on our actual life. We embrace rivalries so much that we manufacture and overplay them, but they work so well in a system bound by hard rules with highly random results.
As that guy who laments the state of modern society, I want to point out how intolerant our society has become of different ideologies, particularly political ones. Despite obvious progress on social issues, it feels like the left and right wings couldn’t be further apart, where we’re increasingly unwilling to date between political parties despite being tolerant of different religions or races. And I sense that the development of online communities filled with people who largely think like ourselves has weakened local communities and the bonds we build with people unlike ourselves except for having picked to live in the same dang latitude and longitude.
At a time like this, maybe we need sports to be that institution that anyone can talk to anyone about. People pay attention to in-depth analysis and can debate predictions because the sports are so random, and we can trust the facts of the game. About the games themselves (not counting the off-field shenanigans), sports have some of the most open and honest discourse and arguments in modern culture, and although it’s mostly about nothing, there’s something to be proud about because no matter who you root for and what side you are on, we can all sit down and watch a game together because we all just want to see a good game.
Anyways, I think I overstayed my moment on the soapbox. I enjoyed the half-time show quite a bit. I saw it coming, but it turns out that I’m a big fan of Katy Perry’s music. A childhood of top 40 music stations means I just can’t resist catchy songs. And apparently, neither can librarians based on their enthusiasm for singing along. Maybe they should pipe top 40 music through libraries. How much fun would that be?