Every year, the lead-up to the Super Bowl gets overblown by every analyst and sports station in the country. Interviews, highlights, and stats abound, encroaching on the life of every good American sports fan. The inundation is relentless right up through the final sideline reports thirty seconds prior to a great flashing of cameras, during which a kickoff is rumored to take place.
Don’t get me wrong, Ricky Bobby. I love America just as much as the next football-obsessed, barbecue wing-eating, Jack Bauer-idolizing guy. But the hours and hours of redundant theatrics, video game simulations and in-depth analysis is enough to make me glad I’m not in the country this week.
Journalists pry, coaches smile and players bling. Questions will range from blitz packages to the best places in Miami to get blitzed—these are twenty-somethings in Miami, after all. Bears quarterback Rex Grossman admitted he couldn’t keep his focus on New Year’s Eve in chilly Chicago. Do you think a week in South Beach won’t be as distracting? Even Emeril and Martha will be sure to find their way onto the tube this week to explain the delectability of their Super Bowl nachos, though the overdose of hoopla may have you sick before you can even whip out the queso.
For football fans abroad, the Super Bowl experience is totally different. There is no ESPNews, no Stuart Scott, and no Peyton Manning commercials. It feels as though there’s a game on Sunday that won’t be upstaged by anything that takes place in the two weeks prior. Outside the U.S., nothing can steal the spotlight from the raw, 60-minute battle because there is nothing to watch during the two weeks prior. Imagine that. Across the Atlantic it’s like the novelty of the Super Bowl has been re-established.
In Europe, most major cities will carry the big game at a sports bar. The live feeds surely vary from one place to the next, opening the possibility for every Colts fan in Prague to have a heart attack when the feed gives way as Chicago’s lightning quick return man Devin Hester reels in a punt. Here in Florence, myriad American bars adorned with big screens and sound systems will be showing the game into the wee hours of what will be for us, Super Monday morning. Here you’ll meet fans of all ages, not only college kids, simply because no one but the bars carry the game live. You can meet people like forty year old Pat, the Patriots fan, who will talk admiringly of his five kids during halftime, or Nathan, who will talk admiringly of the five pitchers he and his boys have finished over the course of the half. Five thousand miles away from home, and both seem like they could be your next-door neighbor in the U.S.
With live games and good fans, the only thing that can make the night worse for the ringleader of the losing squad’s cheering section is trying to find a cab home at five a.m. But fans here don’t worry much during the week because there is no little voice from the television or radio detailing to Bears fans Sexy Rexy’s ineptitude as an NFL quarterback. Here, fans learn about the Renaissance during the week and ponder the potential reactions the four great artists would have to their Ninja Turtle alter-egos. This way they can save all their football mojo for the end of the week, allowing subplots and gameplans to be intriguing rather than boring.
It’s eerie to think that Europe is one of the only places you can get pure football, without all the banter of X’s and O’s and the dissections of wardrobe selections during press conferences. Now if only someone could figure out how to lose the feed during Prince’s halftime show, we would truly have an unadulterated Super Bowl.
