The Super Bowl is awesome. Aside from Christmas and my birthday, it's probably my favorite day of the year. In fact, since the Super Bowl is actually being played on my birthday this year, I can pretty safely say that it will be my favorite day of 2013. Well, I guess graduation will be pretty cool too, but in more of a bittersweet, coming-of-age way than the unbridled joy, awesomeness and cake of a birthday/Super Bowl.
I love the Super Bowl so much that I believe the day after should be a national holiday every American child should have the right to stay up late and watch it. And since a significant portion of American workers are going to be hungover the next day anyway, why not just give them the day off instead of watching them waste time by being unproductive? I'm always a fan of more holidays, but with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Super Bowl Monday and President's Day, the U.S. government would probably think three holidays in the span of one month is a little much.
I know why I love the Super Bowl I love football, and since the Super Bowl is the biggest football game of the year, it's no surprise that I love the Super Bowl, even in a year when my beloved New England Patriots fell one game short of making it. Throw in a few awesome commercials (and, unfortunately, far too many that try desperately to be funny and fail) and I'm perfectly content to sit on a couch staring at a TV for four straight hours on a Sunday night. Technically, I also did this a week ago while watching the AFC Championship game, but to be fair, I didn't watch all of the commercials, as I will while watching the Super Bowl. Plus, I got up for 20 seconds to pay the delivery guy.
Anyway, what I'm more interested in is figuring out why America loves the Super Bowl. Obviously, football is the nation's most popular sport, but if the Super Bowl were just a big football game, you would expect it to draw a lot of viewers, but not significantly more than the AFC or NFC Championship games. Yet in 2012, the AFC Championship game drew 48.7 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. The Super Bowl checked in at 111.3 million. That is a staggering increase of more than 128 percent.
One of the reasons for this increase in viewers is that the conference championship games are viewed as sporting events, while the Super Bowl has become more of a media spectacle and social event. This is the same reason that the Summer Olympics draw so many viewers no one watches swimming or gymnastics outside of the Olympics, but when Americans are force-fed heartwarming storylines and given a chance to root for the red, white and blue, they tune in because everyone else around them is.
The collective experience is crucial to the success of spectator sports, but I would argue that the Summer Olympics and the Super Bowl are the only sporting events where more Americans watch them for the collective experience of watching than the actual athletic drama. So when you combine football a sport millions of Americans watch anyway with the collective experience aspect of the Super Bowl, the result is a massive amount of viewers.
Still, there's more to it than that. At this point, the Super Bowl has become so ingrained in American culture that it's simply assumed that everyone will spend the first Sunday night in February watching the game. I realize that 111.3 million viewers means that, on average, almost two in three people will not watch the game, but getting 111.3 million Americans to do anything at the same time must mean that they like it a whole lot.
What it comes down to is that the Super Bowl is the quintessential American event. America loves the collective experience; we've already covered that. America loves being the best; the Super Bowl determines the best team in the NFL. And America loves football, a sport virtually no other country plays, but one that Americans use to display their belief in the superior toughness, athleticism and skill of American athletes. The Olympics belong to the world; the Super Bowl belongs to America.
So enjoy Super Bowl week, with the follies of media day, the incessant hype apparently the two head coaches this year are brothers? and the game itself, the crown jewel of the American sporting year. I know I will.
