As a non-American, cheeseburger football sure is baffling. Trumpets, marching bands, advertisements, words from sponsors, analysis of team make up, talking heads for half an hour, lots of zooming in and out graphics and animated player cards with stats… Finally the game! Lots of build up, here comes the action… men run forward a little under 2 meters and fall over. Now everyone is walking off the field and a whole new team comes on to do the same, but in reverse. Except first we go through the ads and the trumpets and the sponsors and what not. Time elapsed: 45 minutes. Game time: 45 seconds.
It’s such a slow game! How does it keep people’s interest for what seems like half a day to see so little action??
The SuperBowl is more akin to a televised national religious holiday than a sporting event, brought to you by the best and most moral kind of social institution: Absurdly huge and wealthy corporations.
EDIT: If you tell an average American man you are not interested in the Superbowl… not that you dont watch football in general, but that you do not even care about the /Superbowl/?
They are likely to basically mock you for the rest of your life for reasons they will make up.
Football is very similar to a religion in America, in many ways.
Fuck are you on about? I’m middle-aged, friends and neighbors and coworkers of all races and incomes and ages, live in the South, and I don’t know a soul who watched the game. If it wasn’t for the Taylor Swift thing, I wouldn’t have known it was last Sunday.
Agreed. I’m a soccer/hockey/volleyball fan myself, and really struggled to pay attention for the 4.5 hour event. 115 minute soccer games (once you include halftime and stoppage) are much more my speed.
Similar to the amount of time that football was played during the multi-hour event.
As a non-American, cheeseburger football sure is baffling. Trumpets, marching bands, advertisements, words from sponsors, analysis of team make up, talking heads for half an hour, lots of zooming in and out graphics and animated player cards with stats… Finally the game! Lots of build up, here comes the action… men run forward a little under 2 meters and fall over. Now everyone is walking off the field and a whole new team comes on to do the same, but in reverse. Except first we go through the ads and the trumpets and the sponsors and what not. Time elapsed: 45 minutes. Game time: 45 seconds.
It’s such a slow game! How does it keep people’s interest for what seems like half a day to see so little action??
To actually attempt to answer: it’s a social event and the actual sports part is secondary to the trappings and commentary
Try to understand it like this:
The SuperBowl is more akin to a televised national religious holiday than a sporting event, brought to you by the best and most moral kind of social institution: Absurdly huge and wealthy corporations.
EDIT: If you tell an average American man you are not interested in the Superbowl… not that you dont watch football in general, but that you do not even care about the /Superbowl/?
They are likely to basically mock you for the rest of your life for reasons they will make up.
Football is very similar to a religion in America, in many ways.
Fuck are you on about? I’m middle-aged, friends and neighbors and coworkers of all races and incomes and ages, live in the South, and I don’t know a soul who watched the game. If it wasn’t for the Taylor Swift thing, I wouldn’t have known it was last Sunday.
120 million people watched it. On CBS alone.
You are a statistical outlier.
They already have literal religion to get frothy over.
I see you know your
footballhandegg!Agreed. I’m a soccer/hockey/volleyball fan myself, and really struggled to pay attention for the 4.5 hour event. 115 minute soccer games (once you include halftime and stoppage) are much more my speed.
It’s the absolute celebration of capitalism