Please, people, calm down, it's just a game. A game with mortal players simply there to do their best. A game in which winning will certainly make certain players a bit happier -- and probably millions of dollars richer, I guess. A game in which winners will ride down main Street USA, and visit Billy Dee Obama in the Rose Garden. A game written in sports legends that few will truly remember or care about in 50 years. A game with a victory parade back home, a few souvenirs sold, and stories around the pool table and lunch counter.
A game in which entire cities will reap monetary benefits, from bond issues, tourism, new hotels, restaurants, and an uptick in global perception as a place to be. (Is it any coincidence that two very depressed cities, Detroit and Buffalo, have lousy pro football teams? Or that the entire State of Wisconsin entered an economic rennaisance after Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre and Reggie White brought a winning legacy back to the Dairy State?)
A game in which the losing communities will dive down into a collective funk, resulting in fights, drunkenness, police intervention, and slightly higher mortality rates at local hospitals and nursing homes. A game after which fans of the losing team will jump from bridges, deploy agents of mass destruction, and search the local army surplus stores for automatic weaponry. A game in which the victors will be hailed as laurel wreathed Caesars crossing the Rubicon to imperial glory, while the Carthagenian losers will die in the salted fields of their famished homeland.
Yes, it's just a game, and our society is paying far more attention to it than the crisis in Egypt, the snowstorms, the federal deficit, and the state and local political decisions resulting from huge economic shortfalls. No, this is not just a game, with a bunch of reckless musclemen chasing a ball and clobbering the guts out of each other. It's life, it's happiness, it's glory, it's the Culmination of 266 prior games, and over 800 hours of televised violence. It's prayers from the pulpit clothed in words of safety and pride, but really wanting victory for our gridiron angels over the heathens from that other evil city. It's Lombardi, Lambeau, Hutson, Starr, Hornung, Davis, and Desmond against Rooney, Noll, Bradshaw, Ham, Mean Joe, Franco, Swan, Lambert, and the Bus.
It's waking up and knowing that we're here, where few others have ever gone, to be the best in the ultimate contest of man against man, team against team, and city against city. It hearkens back to a time of Odyseyed battles on the shores of ancient Greece, where even wars were halted for the games at Olympus. Where men competed to stand before the adulation of men and gods alike. Where prowess in Roman coliseums encompassed life and death struggles to the sacrificial altars of entire civilizations. No, this is life, the apex of our American centuries, and nobody, and I mean nobody, can call it just a game.
No sir, this is it, the top, the greatest achievement of humankind, and I really want to see Aaron Rogers alongside Mickey riding down Main Street, with a turkey leg in my hand and elation in my heart. That, my friends, will be a moment worth remembering.
