Super Bowl XLIII

I think of myself as a caring and sensitive individual. Animal welfare, humanity, the entire planet: these weigh heavily on my conscience, daily. But there are times when concerns of this sort must be disregarded in order to appreciate the glory of adult men beating the living shit out of each other upon a field of painted grass. So it was with no guilt that I sat down this afternoon to watch Super Bowl XLIII.

This was actually the first Super Bowl I had seen in five years, since I did not have television during that period. I came to the event about as knowledgeable as my mom normally is about such things. There were only a few veterans that I recognized on each team. The rest of players were completely indistinguishable in terms of their skill or celebrity. The last time I watched the Steelers play Jerome Bettis was their running back. My 12 year old self has just shoved me into a garbage can and called me a pussy.

I won't go into detail about the game, other than it was the classic David versus Goliath setup. David put up a valiant effort and almost triumphed against the odds. But, alas, he was too slow to cast the final stone which would have ensured him a victorious reign. With time - rather than faith - being essential to this game of arbitrary rules, Goliath stormed his adversary with haste and disemboweled him while leaving mere seconds of insignificance left in regulation. He then had a cooler of Gatorade dumped on him.

There were also two noteworthy post-game moments.

1) Joe Namath carrying the championship trophy out to the winning team. Counting him, that made a total of three players that I recognized on the field tonight.

2) John Madden's insightful recap: "It truly was a super-Super Bowl."