As regular readers know, I am anything but a sports fan. However, in the two years I’ve been in Ann Arbor, I have developed quite a taste for college football, at least when the Wolverines are playing.
That taste, however, did not translate into excitement for Sunday’s Superbowl. I tried to watch it, but I my lack of interest was aggravated by the most aggressive sequencing of annoying commercials that I can ever remember enduring. (To my amazement, I am told people like them!) What I had thought would be the “opening kicked off” seemed to drag on for nearly a half an hour, and instead of seeing local Michigan team players who actually look something like athletes, I found myself contemplating a motley collection of older, long-haired, bearded tattooed slobs who would probably be signed on by a Hollywood casting director if they sought acting roles as criminal psychopath types. And they seemed to be sneering during the National Anthem in a way that no politician would be caught dead doing. Not that they’re politicians or role models, but I think their appearance may be a direct result of unsubtle pressure brought to bear to make them be celebrities and role models whether they like it or not. Perhaps if no one cared, they wouldn’t have the need to look defiant. I’m glad no one wants me to be a role model. Being a professional athlete would suck in a way that being a doctor or even a rock star wouldn’t.
So by the time the actual game started, my lack of any enthusiasm for the players was compounded by being exhausted by the commercials, so I changed the channel. Not that there was anything else on; as Ann Althouse (who has the advantage of being from the same state as one of the teams) noted, these were the alternative choices:
So the much-touted “Superbowl Sunday” (and there was mania at the local supermarket) would have been a big yawn had I stayed in front of the damned tube, which I didn’t.
Excitement? Hah!
Glenn Reynolds linked a post by Ilya Somin about getting excited over teams, or at least caring (which is probably a mild form of excitement). Somin sees it as vicarious identification:
Not everyone enjoys vicarious identification, of course. And among those who do, some prefer to satisfy their craving by means other than rooting for sports teams. But vicarious identification is a common and deeply rooted emotion — one that probably has biological roots. And it’s not really that surprising that it leads some people to root for sports teams in much the same way as it leads others to identify with fictional characters.
Again, I have no problem caring about and rooting for the Wolverines. I don’t know whether I identify with them (certainly they are not role models for me) so much as I join in the local spirit. But there is something about the Superbowl that seems like deliberately contrived, deliberately ginned-up excitement. Like, you’re just supposed to get excited over one team or the other. Is getting excited a learned taste? Or is it a human need? Would I have been able to enjoy it more had I simply picked a team and decided to root for it simply to trigger that “get excited and care” impulse? Which team? I moved to Michigan from Pennsylvania, but I never spent much time in Pittsburgh and never identified with that team. OTOH, Michigan is next to Wisconsin, and both are sort of “Midwestern” states, so maybe my loyalties should lie there. Plus, Green Bay is close to the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula border. However, distance-wise Pittsburgh is closer; to drive to Green Bay would take me 7 hours and 44 minutes while a drive to Pittsburgh would take only 4 hours and 51 minutes.
It would be a tough pick, and I’d probably do better to flip a coin and then get excited over my choice.
Hmmm…. I’m not liking that word “choice.” Perhaps it would have been destiny?
Forgive me for not finding that exciting.
I find the debate over “human trafficking” at the Superbowl more exciting, perhaps even annoying. Manufactured outrage has a way of annoying me, because I sometimes worry that I have to manufacture my own outrage to combat the phenomenon. Which is bad, because that can only lead to cycles of manufactured outrage.
A variety of traditions characterize Super Bowl Sunday, the unofficial sports holiday in America.
Besides the obvious viewing of the game, much of these beloved, common customs include fun and games that involve the gluttonous consumption of food and alcohol while surrounded by friends and family.
Expensive TV commercials–memorable for either their ingenuity or notoriety–and the unfailingly hyped halftime show also mark this monumental occasion.
Super Bowl Sunday serves as one glorious, nationwide party.
However, beneath all the cheer and excitement surrounding the Super Bowl lies an insidiously vile practice, the not-so-secret, but routinely ignored, world of human trafficking.
The outraged writer continues at length. While I agree that actual child prostitution is a bad thing, there is something about the phrase “human trafficking” which looks like an emergent form of weasel wording which lends itself perfectly to conflate adult prostitution with child prostitution, and voluntary sex for money with sexual slavery. This is reflected in the Wiki entry on the subject:
Sex trafficking victims are generally found in dire circumstances and easily targeted by traffickers. Individuals, circumstances, and situations vulnerable to traffickers include homeless individuals, runaway teens, displaced homemakers, refugees, and drug addicts. While it may seem like trafficked people are the most vulnerable and powerless minorities in a region, victims are consistently exploited from any ethnic and social background.
Traffickers, also known as pimps or madams, exploit vulnerabilities and lack of opportunities, while offering promises of marriage, employment, education, and/or an overall better life. However, in the end, traffickers force the victims to become prostitutes or work in the sex industry. Various work in the sex industry includes prostitution, dancing in strip clubs, performing in pornographic films and pornography, and other forms of involuntary servitude.
I don’t like seeing anyone forced to do anything. But I think it is dishonest to equate “work in the sex industry” with “involuntary servitude.”
It should surprise no one that a major event like the Superbowl would draw prostitutes and that some of them would be underage. But a local news report says that the claims are unsupported:
DALLAS — For weeks now, police, politicians and non-profit agencies have warned that a wave of prostitutes will be coming to North Texas for Super Bowl festivities.
But News 8 has learned there is no evidence supporting such claims.
That has not stopped the hysteria, although some of the activists seem to be backing off from previous claims:
Ernie Allen, director for The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said he was misquoted last year when predicting 10,000 prostitutes would show up in Miami for Super Bowl XLIV.
Allen said the Super Bowl likely doesn’t attract more sex traffickers than any other large event. What’s more, he also conceded there is no way to quantify the problem.
Still, he and Graves both said the issue is under-recognized and under-reported.
“Sometimes when numbers are very high, people think it’s hopeless and they may not even try to address the issue,” said Becky Sykes of the Dallas Women’s Foundation.
The organization has commissioned a study to research Internet ads and escort services during February. It’s specifically looking for underage girls as prostitutes and hoping — for the first time — to see whether the Super Bowl really increases sex trafficking in the host city.
Critics blame some women’s groups for the prostitution myth as they try to raise awareness without facts.
No one disputes that trafficking is a serious and sickening problem, but whether the Super Bowl intensifies it is a prediction no one can yet prove.
The Toronto Star also reports that tales of prostitution at major athletic events have been systematically hyped up over the years.
I remember when feminists used to complain about allegedly Superbowl-fueled domestic violence, and they called it the “day of dread” for women. It was a major source of Superbowl hysteria until the claims were finally debunked.
It was not unlike Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” — the radio broadcast whose report of an invasion from another planet produced panic among gulled listeners. But this time it wasn’t the public that panicked.
Shortly before Super Bowl Sunday, word went forth from a devoutly progressive media “watchdog” group called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) that on the big football day wives and girlfriends en masse could expect to be battered and assaulted by the man of the house. And indeed, NBC broadcast a somber public service spot before the game, announcing that “domestic violence is a crime.”
Word went forth also that “studies” existed, proving that woman-battering by football-crazed husbands and boyfriends rose by an astounding 40% on Super Bowl Sundays — that battered women’s shelters were besieged on this day by calls for help. Thus, FAIR’s specter of shelters’ staffs grimly awaiting the blood-drenched tides of victims seeking refuge from males run amok during the Bills and
Cowboys game.All these pronouncements were received as sacred writ by an entirely credulous army of journalists. We are talking here, after all, about the toughest investigative battalions. But feed them a story about mass victimization and how the women of the nation have to go into hiding on a certain Sunday of the year, and they have no questions.
I think it may be that there is a human need for something to get excited about, and I expect more lurid tales of “human trafficking” at the Superbowl.
Wow. I actually wrote a post about the Superbowl!
If someone told me on Sunday that I would end up doing that I’d have laughed.
(I guess it can be fun to get excited — even though it can sometimes be a bit of a ritualized process resembling work.)
Comments
2 responses to “How “Superbowl Excitement Syndrome” affects us all!”
I live about 30 miles from the Wisconsin border (a LOT of Green Bay fans here) and about 90 miles by road from Althouse plus Green Bay beat Chicago to get to the Superbowl. And I have a son who was at home who likes football.
It was a pretty good game.
The most awful commercial? The guy getting kicked repeatedly in the nuts.
One aspect of team loyalty that always strikes me as odd is self identification with the team. I really cannot fathom the mindset of a person who says “We beat the shit out of Philly, didn’t we?”
We? For one thing, what connection do you have with that team, really? For another, how does civic pride get linked to a sports organization that hires players from all over, and in fact might not have a single player from your town?
As to the Superbowl Spouse Abuse myth, I suspect that it still resonates with many who know it isn’t true, because, for them, it ought to be true. It’s akin to many others that are still commonly accepted, however false they are, because they somehow reinforce what a person wants to believe. Many are benign, such as the “Full moon nights overload police and hospital emergency rooms” or the “Red cars get more tickets.”
Others are toxic, such as “9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad.”