Michael Overall: Super Bowl mishaps bring country together
BY MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Monday, February 04, 2013
2/04/13 at 4:59 AM
After an exciting day of skateboarding, getting chased by a biker gang and dressing up as robots, a family sits down for a dinner of cookies and cupcakes.
"What are we going to do now?" a little boy asked his father in the Hyundai commercial just before kickoff Sunday.
"Well," the dad said, "I think there's a game on."
The game, of course, is almost beside the point. Like the art at Mayfest, it's the excuse for doing it all but not really the reason most people come. Or in this case, tune in.
At least 160 million people, or more than half the population of the entire United States, were expected to watch part, if not all, of the Super Bowl.
By some estimates, that's more than 10 times the audience of a typical game day. So, obviously, I'm not the only one who ignores the NFL until the big championship.
Even people who can't tell the difference between a touchdown and a home run will make a point of watching this one game.
And by the time Beyonce strutted on stage in her underwear at halftime, they were asking themselves why they bothered.
Well, for some, Beyonce and her missing pants were the reason to watch.
But for the rest of us, the answer came a little less than three minutes into the third quarter.
When everybody's coming to work Monday talking about "The Blackout," you don't want to be the only one who hasn't already tweeted about it, do you?
You watch the Super Bowl because everybody watches the Super Bowl.
We Americans don't seem to have a lot in common these days, divided between red states and blue.
We don't watch the same TV news, don't listen to the same Pandora channels, don't necessarily even speak the same language.
But we can all share our disgust at watching a GoDaddy model make-out with a guy who has never held a girl's hand before.
We can all pretend that allergies are making our eyes water while watching a baby Clydesdale grow up.
We can all hide our Doritos from the goat and be happy for the guy who left the prom with a black eye.
And if the white guy in the next cubicle keeps slipping into a Jamaican accent this week, you'll know he drives a Volkswagen.
For 34 minutes Sunday night, 76,000 people sat in the dark at the Superdome, and the whole country kind of bonded over it.
Some thought the Beyonce sound techs turned off the lights because the concert was over.
Some suggested the janitors saw the scoreboard and assumed the game was over.
Others figured out that the 49ers used the darkness to sneak in a different team.
But whatever happened, it gave America something to talk about.
Original Print Headline: Bonding over Bowl mishaps
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