It’s easy to not quite get the Super Bowl. What exactly is it: a sporting event, a music show, a fashion parade for the world’s coolest pair of shades, a new version of the Chippendales with the hunks wearing tight trousers and skid lids? Or, in its latest incarnation, a chance for the world’s most frenetic law-maker to sink his last putt in a round of golf with Tiger Woods, board Air Force One and say: ‘Fly me to New Orleans.’
Or is it a chance to watch several vast and amiable black guys bulging out of their suits and bantering away about a possible three-peat, while Trombone Shorty plays a touching version of ‘America the Beautiful’ and an announcer calls for a moment’s silence to mark the importance of ‘faith, family and football’?
It’s all of the above, of course. Because the Super Bowl might seem like a monster of modernity, but really it’s just a turbocharged reversion to the big gig that started it all, the ancient Olympics. OK, these did include some sporting challenges, but they were as much about the aesthetics of the human form as recording a personal best, and the rest was cultural stuff, as were the wraparound add-ons at the appropriately named Caesars Superdome in the Big Easy.
Back in the day, Emperors Hadrian and Antonino Pius looked on as Taylor Swifts in togas sang their songs, cheerleaders in mini tunics flaunted their wares and poets spouted their iambic pentameter.
On Sunday it was Emperor Trump who, while tweeting crossly about the pointless one cent piece, gazed out from beneath his miraculously cantilevered quiff at his adoring minions as Kendrick Lamar rapped from the bonnet of his Buick GNX and Serena Williams looked fabulous while performing the LA Crip Walk. You like to imagine that at least one or two Americans were thinking of e.e. cummings’s famous line, ‘I thank you God for most this amazing day’. But maybe not. No, there’s no new thing under the sun. The Super Bowl is as old as the Ancient Olympics.
It’s really just a turbo-charged reversion to the big gig that started it all, the Ancient Olympics
As it is, today’s NFL is bigger than ever and preparing to take over the world – and the world is very willing. Next season there are NFL matches in Berlin, at Wembley and Tottenham, and now the Pittsburgh Steelers will play in front of 80,000 at Dublin’s Croke Park. The whole thing is very smart marketing, and British sport needs to follow suit. The Philadelphia Eagles’s dismemberment of the hot favourites Kansas was largely down to the humiliation of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who had a nightmare of a game.
Well, that can happen to a star player – although thankfully at Twickenham on Saturday, it didn’t. The Smiths, Fin and Marcus, two young pretenders to the pivotal England fly-half position, were both on show for an epic battle against France. The differences were illuminating. Fin was cool, composed and accurate; Marcus exciting, hotheaded and occasionally rash. One should beware of jumping to conclusions but, from where I sat, Fin very much looked like the man England need in their wheelhouse for the next decade. Which isn’t to say Marcus does not have a vast amount to offer. He is a huge mercurial talent who could best serve the team by coming on as an impact sub late in the game, where there is more space to provide those game-changing magic moments. It was a great win for England, helped along by the fact that France were dropping balls at an alarming rate.
As this magnificent tournament winds on, I still think France will beat Ireland. England should beat Scotland – Scotland aren’t as good as most people thought, while England are better. Neither Wales nor Italy will win any of their remaining games, though Italy will put up a much better fight.
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