Superbowl XLVI

A mere 12 days after the actual event and 11 days after I mentioned that I would write something soon, I bring you my Superbowl 46 post.... yeah, I am totally on top of this blogging malarky... Look! I've written a ridiculously long post to make up for it (?) 

So, the Superbowl! A totally American thing to experience, made all the more exciting for the fact the the New England Patriots, Boston's home team, were in the Superbowl! Boston actually seem to be quite good at sport - all of the big American sports (American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball) have teams that have won their championships recently. I'm not sure the rest of America particularly likes any Boston team except for the Red Sox (a proper old baseball team playing in a proper old stadium who won their first World Series for the best part of a century in 2004). The Patriots have won three Superbowls, all since 2001, and two of which were with their current quarterback Tom Brady (Mr. Gisele Bundchen). However, the Patriots lost the last Superbowl they were in (4 years ago) to the other team in Superbowl 46 - the New York Giants.

From top left, clockwise: Patriots rings sold in local supermarket, reduced Superbowl hours at local hardware store, on-offer chips from grocery store, football cookie with Patriot's red accents from my beloved flour

The rest of America may have wanted New York to win but Boston were totally supporting their home team. Ever since I arrived there have been "Go Pats" signs everywhere as they progressed through the playoffs, and lots of offers on snacks and sodas in my local supermarket, with signs reminding people to stock up for the big game. On the actual day of the superbowl I did stock up and toddled over with my British friend Ann to my American friend Rita's apartment. Rita had promised to patiently explain everything important about the Superbowl to us, and it was amazing, by the end of the game I kind of understood what was happening.

So, as I understand it, the Superbowl has four major elements:

• Food
• Commercials
• Halftime show
• The actual game

And plenty of people will watch the Superbowl who will not have seen an American football game all year, just because they want to see the ridiculously expensive commercials and the halftime show (people like me!). I think over 100 million people watched Superbowl 46.

Let me break down how we approached the four elements of Superbowl success:

Food

I went grocery shopping and bought miscellaneous American items, including tortilla chips shaped like a spoon, so that you can scoop up dip. They are called "scoops" and they are totally in my top ten favourite things about America. You can see one in the picture above...isn't it the greatest idea ever!

Rita made a delicious chili, which is apparently a superbowl tradition. I am in favour of delicious traditions. Particularly ones which are so delicious that I forget to take a photo. Another superbowl tradition is chicken wings. A friend of mine ate 6lbs of chicken wings with his 4 friends for superbowl 46 (the internet suggest one chicken wing is one ounce, so that would be 48 chickens worth of wings?!?! That cannot be right). 

Ann made an incredible pear tart, which was so delicious it should also be a Superbowl tradition. 

Photos not taken during the superbowl, as too distracted by the deliciousness of the tart.

I know bringing chips now seems kind of lame, but may I remind you that they are like EDIBLE SPOONS!! We used them to eat the chili. I also bought beer, although it was raspberry ginger ale, which is probably less of a superbowl tradition than the regular alcoholic kind of ale. Next year, I'll step up to the plate (and try not to use the wrong sport's metaphors).

Commercials

For such expensive things they were kind of disappointing. Some of the big ones had even been available online for a week before, like the Ferris Bueller one. My favourite bit in the commercial breaks was when the very expensive Superbowl commercials would suddenly become local ones with substantially lower production values. They would be advertising Superbowl sales in some random Massachusetts card dealer or something and have a lot of brightly coloured text. My least favourite of all the ads was the murderous mobster dog who keep buying his owner's silence with Doritos (no link, it is really terrible). I quite liked the one with the exercising dog below, but I am sad that it is for a car.

The strangest and most awesome commercial aired at half time. It was funded by a bunch of car companies and featured Clint Eastwood.

"It's halftime in America, and our second half is about to begin"

Isn't that just perfect? But doesn't it also sound like a total Obama endorsement? There have been lots of statements that it was not meant to be an ad endorsing a particular person, but we are entering election time in the US. All the news coverage is about the Republican primaries, which decide who will be their candidate, so it kind of feels like everything is about the election already. I genuinely thought the Clint Eastwood Detroit car makers advert was an Obama campaign ad for almost all of its duration. I do totally love the advert though. I hope you can see it outside of the US. 

Let's hear those engines roar America! Vroom!

Halftime show - Madonna

Madonna being dragged by shiny gladiator men! Obscenity that I didn't even notice! LMFAO! And, most amazingly, a guy who could jump and bounce around on a tightrope!

Woo! 

The GAME

OK, so I didn't understand anything that was going on in the first half other than:

• American football players are really big.
• The padding they wear just seems to let them run into each other harder.
• Tom Brady is often expressionless, and has a robot arm!
• Eli Manning (Giants quarterback) is not expressionless. He probably also has a robot arm. The quarterbacks use the robot arm to communicate with the bench.
• The teams keep being swapped around! As in, when a team is attacking, it is made up of completely different players to when that same team is defending. Therefore if the defence intercepts a pass and some guy scores a touchdown, that is unlikely to be something that happens to him often. He is not meant to be scoring touchdowns. 
• The man who kicks the ball is only ever on the field to kick the ball!!! So the playoffs have hinged on kicking points, and when you mess up as a kicker, you cannot console yourself with playing a good game generally, as your entire game is trotting on the field to kick the ball! Poor weedy kicking men, they seem like children compared to the oversized football players....

However, I did understand what was going on enough in the last 5 minutes to find it incredibly tense! It was AMAZING. The Giants were losing, but had the possession and a field goal was all they needed to win. So the Giants were trying to keep advancing enough to keep possession, whilst playing slowly enough to nearly run down the clock, so the Patriots wouldn't have much of a chance of scoring again. Conversely the Patriots were so desperate for a chance to score again that they let the guy who scored for the Giants go, just so they would have a chance to attack again. Sadly for Boston the Patriots didn't score in the last 55 seconds of the game, despite some sort of chances (in their play before they had had real chances to score but people could not successfully catch the passes, leading to a Butterfingers prank in Boston). However, on the bright side this must surely be the funniest winning touchdown of any Superbowl....

New York did deserve to win. They played well in the first half and didn't really make lots of mistakes Plus, look at this AMAZING catch.

So, if you made it to the end of this ultra rambly post well done. 

In conclusion, a close Superbowl is amazing to watch! American football can be incredibly tense. I totally hid behind a cushion for the last 5 minutes of the game.

Thank you so much for explaining the game, Rita! I had so much fun watching with you guys!

PS Let me know if the videos break, they're pretty likely too I think. Also let me know if you cant see them outside of the US and I'll try and fix that too.

PPS In the post game trophy awarding stuff "winning the Superbowl" suddenly started being called "being World Champions"