Football Dominates American Culture and Simultaneously Ignores Its Decline – An Out-of-Bounds Super Bowl?
By Greg Maresca
Who reading this can recall when the Super Bowl was played in mid-January? How many can remember when the NFL’s championship game was called just that: The NFL Championship game?
Stadiums are torn down. Rules change, rosters are gutted, and equipment evolves. Teams move, and new ones emerge while others change their names and mascots. Time passes, but the fundamentals of the game endure.
The NFL’s Super Bowl Sunday is the high holy day of American sports and the Lombardi Trophy – the ark of its covenant. Not to be dismissed, the game is also the showcase of American marketing prowess. Regardless of who is playing, the masses gather to watch a 60-minute football game that lasts nearly four hours, preceded by even more hours of pregame hype flooded with an endless stream of commercials.
This will be Tom Brady’s 11th Super Bowl, but the first from the broadcast booth, which will conclude his inaugural season of a ten-year, $375 million contract with Fox Sports. This may be Brady’s most challenging Super Bowl – minus the New York Giants.
Have the Giants won a playoff game since they toppled Brady’s Patriots – twice?
One of the few things most Americans know about the Roman Empire is its linear trail of numbers adopted at the advent of the Super Bowl. This year marks Super Bowl LIX between the Chiefs and Eagles at the Superdome in New Orleans. Those Roman numerals always give the game a faux regal touch.
The Chiefs hope to become the first three-peat football empire in the Super Bowl era. As great as the Tom Brady-led Patriots were, even their dominance ended – more proof that all empires fall.
Mentioning empires, British army officer Sir John Bagot Glubb’s essay, “The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival,” hypothesized how empires typically last about 250 years.
America reaches that plateau on July 4, 2026.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning, less than three weeks before Christmas, back when America was a Christian nation. If the Chinese were serious about making a move on Taiwan, Super Bowl Sunday would be ideal for catching contemporary pagan America drunk at the wheel. The invasion would commence at 6:20 EST – kickoff.
Why should the Chinese spare us the agony of the hollow babble of the pregame shows?
Democracy dies in dumbness – another reason the Department of Education must perish. For democracy to thrive, we need free trade and true liberalism, as defined in the spirit of Adam Smith. Since Smith doesn’t suit up for the Eagles or Chiefs, most Americans have no clue of his economic genius.
The suits at Fox are an exception.
Despite NFL viewership slightly declining this past season, Fox Sports reached unprecedented levels for Super Bowl advertising. Since November, some advertisers have dropped, including State Farm insurance amid the California wildfires. According to USA Today, Fox has since sold those spots at even higher rates. In a bold move, Fox upped the ante on a 30-second spot from $7 million to $8 million and sold out – an 88% increase from just a decade ago.
So much for peak-level pricing and Chiefs fatigue.
The NFL is the Superman of the media industrial complex, continuing to leap all Neilson ratings in a single bound. The Super Bowl is like no other form of bread and circus entertainment we can conjure up.
The Eagles and Chiefs have spent profoundly on their rosters. Kansas City paid quarterback Patrick Mahomes a 10-year, $450 million deal in 2020 – the largest contract in NFL history. Philadelphia signed quarterback Jalen Hurts to a five-year, $255 million contract in 2023, while Saquon Barkley is the NFL’s highest-paid running back.
According to the American Gaming Association, 67 million will wager over $23 billion on the game, proving once again that the American welfare safety net is overextended.
The losing team’s players and coaches will receive a check for $96,000, while the winners rake in $171,000 each. That is $7,000 more than 2024’s Super Bowl payout.
Next season, players on the losing team will also make six figures. These figures do not include all the provisional bonuses written in players’ contracts for making it to the game.
There are no losers in the Super Bowl.
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