By Shaun Tumpane
Laguna Woods Globe columnist
With Super Bowl Sunday almost upon us, it behooves me to opine on this, the quintessential American sacred cow. Now, I’m not impugning worship of any kind; however, when over 120 million people do anything, one could argue that whatever they’re doing can be categorized as a religion.
One need to go no further than to observe the painted faces, the plastic gold link chains sized to fit a gorilla, the rainbow-colored frizzy wigs, and the minimum of $6,000,000 worth of NFL trademarked jerseys worn by the pigskin priests and priestesses in attendance to know that the Super Bowl is the personification of deification.
At least one worshipper of a rival theology somehow sneaks in with a placard displaying 3:16, which many in the TV audience mistake for a final score prediction, but in the main, the other 69,999 at Levi’s Stadium will conjure up any and all rituals, incantations and superstitions to will their team to victory. If the Super Bowl had been held in the Aztec era, it would have been a tricky day for virgins near the top of volcanoes.
One can argue that while the Super Bowl is over the top in hype, it is a singular event, and every once in a while going overboard isn’t that big a deal. That might be true, except for one salient point: This worship, like any other, isn’t a one-day-of-the-year deal.
Yes, many Christians don’t go to church more often than at Christmas and Easter, but the devout attend services weekly, ironically also on Sundays. Enter the Football Widows of America.
Following your team from pre-season through the regular season and into the playoffs is seen by sports fans as axiomatic, but for those long-suffering wives, girlfriends and family members – who only see three hours of 22 men, half of whom are stand-up freezer sized, grunting, sweating, pushing and shoving each other attempting to impose their collective physical will – it signifies nothing of any intrinsic value whatsoever.
Think this is wrong? How about the unbelievably inane justifications for not taking the family to the beach, the movies, a picnic, or any other of a hundred things a family could and, many would argue, should do in lieu of Dad parked in front of the TV, beer, chips and bean dip adorning his Green Bay Packers jersey and a cheese triangle adorning the top of his flushed and florid face, screaming, “Pass interference you stupid black-and-white striped moron?!” Or another whiny entreaty, “Aw come on, honey, it’s the playoffs!”
Of course, forgotten in these heartwarming discussions is the fact that the playoffs last a month, and the whiner fails to adequately explain why he, the aforementioned Packer Backer, just has to watch all the playoff games, not just the one in which his team is playing.
And just who or what in the hell is Bad Bunny?
Shaun Tumpane is a Laguna Woods Village resident.