For the less avid sports fan there is the half time show. ....Half time shows. I wonder about half time shows. Why did Janet Jackson really stick her boob out at a half time show once upon a Superbowl? Did she stick it out by accident? Did she stick it out on purpose? Did it stick itself out? Did it look any different than anyone else's? Perhaps I have seen better, but it surely sidelined the game: I cannot even remember who played in that game. I remember the media scrum that the half time show ignited, though!Come on, girls, even you itch a bit for this game too, don't you? This is "the big game". This is the game of all games. The biggest game. Until next week. Forget the finesse of fencing. Chess is too cerebral for television. Baseball is for shorts and long August bleacher days. There is figure skating: what husband is not all for that, but what husband doesn't watch it avidly just for those pretty, oh so pretty skirts, damn it all?
No, this is the one. Mr Ego, your blossoming household champion, a hero in his very own living room, is going to be lost to his armchair coaching. He will be calling the shots on substitutes, and he will have his own play book. Thanks to his remote control he will be there on the field, too, ducking inside and diving outside..... just like he did when he made the school team. Yes. Once a jock, always a jock. Just in case you forgot last year's recital of the moments of fame, he might remind you of all his sporting moments all over again, just like he does every year!
That chit chat is for the commercial breaks, all of which are probably a lot more interesting by now, thanks to the best behavioural psychologists that money can buy. In between ads, its the game. Forget the commentators. Your very own Joe Cool will be running both teams in resplendent hi def as if he was actually running ON the field with a Sony Bravia remote control for a pigskin and a bottle of Bud for his rehydration.
The discerning girl will be looking too, perhaps not so much with season statistics in mind as much as DNA options. No skirts on this field. Just big guys, some bigger guys, some faster than others, and some who just have the rest of their team on the field for conversation because they're winning it singlehandedly. All of these guys look after themselves. They are athletes! Why can't all guys look after themselves like these guys do? Problem is, which one do you go for, and of those, which one who is not on some performance enhancing drug? Which one? Ooooh la la! The guy who laughs at pain? The guy with the fancy footwork? The guy with the rock hard buttocks, or the 250lb bulldozer, or just the bull? Which one do you fancy? Maybe it is the jock who interviews well after the game, or perhaps the calm one who has a pair of hands that look like they were made for you?
Whatever. Whether fantasy or whim, we can all forgive ourselves an afternoon off for "the big game" once a year. Let's face it, the rest of the world will be watching too, even as far away as Australia. The game has global appeal - its the best game in the world..... right?
Chin up, girls! It could be worse. So what if you widowed yourself to a Homer who thinks it doesn't get bigger than the Supebowl and XLIV comes from a numbering system jointly developed by British Broadcasting Corporation and Metro Goldwyn Mayer for copyrighting their respective productions? Surely it is not as bad as landing yourself with the only guy in the world who hedges his bets by keeping a team on either side of the Atlantic (the Dolphins are and always will be the only NFL squad to go undefeated in a season!) and who can tell you that England leads the series XII to VI (since 1992, anyhow).
