In two days, approximately 106.5 million people will arm themselves with beer and pizza, clutch their remote controls and take to their couches to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers duke it out for football supremacy in the National Football League’s 45th Super Bowl, the United States’ largest annual sporting event and the second most watched sports game in the world.
The Super Bowl’s status is definitely not lost on the fans, who buy jerseys and pretzels, hopping from bandwagon to bandwagon as they attempt to find an edge in predicting which team will eventually emerge as champion. Speculation occurs everywhere from the sports bar to the office water cooler, as blue-collars and white-collars alike unite over the love of the game, at least for one memorable Sunday a year.
The problem is, most of the game’s 100 million viewers aren’t watching for the love of the game. In fact, most of them aren’t even football fans to begin with, but instead embrace the event for the same reason companies compete for the opportunity to pay $3 million for a 30-second commercial spot during the event’s broadcast – the Super Bowl has become a social status symbol in North American culture.
Unfortunately, the same can be said for most professional sports nowadays.
Multi-millionaire athletes have attained cult hero status in society and are desired almost as much for their marketability as their athletic prowess.
Meanwhile, bandwagon fans latch onto the hottest team like a fashion trend, dumping them quickly when the next team on a winning streak comes along. It’s not for love of the game, it’s for love of the status that comes with being a fan of the game.
Consider this: the Ottawa Senators, currently languishing near the bottom of the National Hockey League’s Eastern Conference, still draw nearly 19,000 fans a game.
They receive attention from local and national media intent on analyzing and reanalyzing all the possible things that could be wrong with the team. Ottawa residents go about their daily lives decked out in Senators jerseys, toques, and mitts, showing their undying fan loyalty to a team that has, for much of the season, underachieved on an embarrassing level.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town the Carleton Ravens men’s hockey team toils in relative obscurity, drawing only the most ardent of supporters to cheer them on at Carleton’s Ice House.
Ask any casual hockey fan wearing a Senators jersey on the streets of Ottawa and most probably wouldn’t know that the Ravens are currently one of the elite teams in a tough Ontario University Athletics East division and roll a roster stacked with major junior level talent.
But of course, that is the nature of professional sports. They will always be drastically more popular because they are more widely promoted, more heavily invested in, and as such, offer their fans the status that comes with supporting such a prominent societal player.
In truth, the real sports fans, those who love the game for the game itself, can rarely be found at events like Senators’ games or the Super Bowl.
Instead, find them shivering in the stands at McNabb Arena at 5:30 any weekday morning, clutching Tim Horton’s mugs and watching their five-year-olds learn the game of hockey. Find them in the bleachers at Carleton University, watching the men’s basketball team add yet another championship to its dynasty as Canada’s most dominant program. Find them anywhere love of the game is still the reason why the game is played.
Just don’t look for them in the stands at the Super Bowl.