Super Bowls are demarcated using Roman numerals, with one exception. Super Bowl 50 is called Super Bowl 50 because the powers-that-be thought that Super Bowl L looks weird. I guess it does, but, in my opinion, it looks less weird than seeing one obvious outlier in the list of Super Bowls.* In a way, it is fitting that Super Bowl 50 is an outlier in how it is enumerated, as the game itself was an outlier. It was among the worst Super Bowls ever -- a terrible, yawn-inducing game. It was a punt-and-turnover-fest (21 total), featuring a decrepit Peyton Manning quarterbacking one team and a total outmatched Cam Newton quarterbacking the other. I remember watching it at some friends' house on their massive TV (like 100 inches) and thinking to myself, So much screen wasted on this awful game. At least the company was good.
*I wonder what they will do at the 100th Super Bowl. Will it be Super Bowl 50 or Super Bowl C? Will there ever be a 100th Super Bowl? Will I be alive to see it? I would be 88 and I love football, so hopefully on both accounts.
Although, now that I look at it, maybe it wasn't such an outlier game. The boring Super Bowl is unfortunately making a bit of a comeback. When I became a cognizant football fan, around age 7 (1984), the Super Bowl was entering into a strange period in which almost every game was noncompetitive and boring. For a nearly 20-year stretch, there were exactly three exciting Super Bowls (Giants-Bills, Broncos-Packers, Rams-Titans), everything else was a blowout or a slog. Then, something changed, and for about 15 years the Super Bowl was reasonably close almost every year, and we got a bunch of all-time classics like Patriots-Panthers, Steelers-Cardinals, Ravens-49ers, and (so help me) Patriots-Seahawks. But since 2014 it's been a mixed bag. The Patriots comeback win against the Falcons and their loss the next year to the Eagles were both really fun games, but their victory over the Rams was arguably worse to watch than Super Bowl 50 (it's the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever -- 16 total points), and the Bucs-Chiefs game was also an awful spectator experience. So, we shall see how it goes tonight.
The Super Bowl is mostly for the tourists, anyway. Unless your team is in it (which has happened three glorious times for me), the "real" NFL fans prefer the early rounds of the playoffs or even important regular-season weeks. Back when I used to spend every Sunday in a sports bar, the first week of the season was my favorite one. But it's kinda good that I'm not that invested in tonight's game. We're going to some friends' house (not the ones with the humongous TV), and it will be easier to socialize (and eat) this way. Also, we will have to leave at halftime (no Ri-ri for us) and miss much of the third quarter. The game starts too damn late on the East Coast. If we actually stayed for the entire thing, the kids wouldn't be in bed until 11:00. They really should move up kickoff to 4:00. That would be 1:00 on the West Coast, which seems fine to me. It might even be better than 3:30 (the current West Coast kickoff time) because it would line up nicely with lunch.
Anyway... let's lightning round the rest of this entry.
- S is back, which is nice. The single-dadding this week was a bit
more challenging because Lil' S1 got sick and stayed home most of
Thursday and all of Friday. It's some sort of throat issue that is not
Covid. It could be what I got a few weeks ago, but it's a milder strain,
as he's been able to function pretty normally, other than only being
able to eat really soft foods for a few days. He says he feels better
now, so hopefully we're past it.
- We are having some work
done on our house (screening in our back deck) and one of the
construction workers got his wallet stolen from his car in front of our
house. Our neighbor caught the entire thing on his security camera.
Somebody drove past our house, put their car in reverse and rolled back
to it, and then started trying to unlock every door of every car parked
in the area, until they found one that was unlocked. Unfortunately, the
footage wasn't clear enough to make out a license plate or anything like
that. I feel so bad for the guy who got his wallet stolen -- I mean, don't leave you wallet in your car
on a DC street, even if it is locked -- but still it really sucks for
him. He said he didn't have much money in it, and he canceled his credit
cards immediately, so basically all the thief did was ruin some random
dude's day -- so unnecessary.
- Speaking of crime, the DC
city council rewrote the crime code here, and it's caused some
controversy. Most everybody agrees with 95% of it, but the other 5%
seems to be following the trend of downplaying certain types of crimes
(in this case carjacking) in the name social justice. The mayor vetoed
it, but the city council overrode her veto, but then the Republican-led
House voted to kill it (because Congress has the ultimate say over DC
law), and now I'm not sure where it stands. I haven't been able to
figure out if the House can kill it on it's own or if it has to go to
the Senate and the president like a normal bill.
- It puts the mayor in an awkward position of potentially being helped out by a party of which she is not a member and a system (Congressional rule of DC) she hates. I'm with the mayor on this one. Crime in DC (as in many other cities) is currently at an unacceptable level, and the effects of this are disproportionately felt by people of color (like the guy who got his wallet jacked). Reducing crime, not the penalties for committing crimes, seems to me the move we should make in the name of social justice.
Well, that's all I got for today. Until next time...
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