The wife and I watched this year's Super Bowl with some old friends--we have been friends for decades. And I found myself in a familiar role of being the only one rooting the team I favored. So while everyone else rooted for the Eagles, I rooted for the Chiefs despite having grown up in the Philadelphia area.
I use to be an Eagles fan but then dropped the team when they hired Buddy Ryan as their coach. That was decades ago. I moved on to another team. The Chiefs was not that team, but I rooted for them because I really like their quarterback.
The Eagles played with the more energy than the Chiefs in the first half and I suspected that the Chiefs would return the favor in the 2nd half and they did. The only question was whether the Chiefs could overcome a 10 point deficit. They did thanks a good team effort and the quarterbacking of Patrick Mahomes. And even the opposing quarterback statistically outperformed Mahomes, Mahomes's engineering of the victory earned him MVP honors for the game.
The Chiefs did have one advantage over the Eagles that was rarely if ever mentioned. The Chiefs had been tested during the playoffs by Jacksonville and Cincinnati. Both of those opponents were tougher teams than the Eagles face especially after both 49er quarterbacks were injured in the NFC Championship game with the Eagles.
As I watched the different parts of the pregame ceremonies and the game itself, I tried to imagine how people from other nations saw the U.S. We should note that almost every part of the pregame ceremonies was hyped which demanded applause. The same could have been said for the halftime show that was far more show than it was music. Pop music in the US is rather simple and it promotes conformity in how audiences suppose to respond. That conformity can be used to promote authoritarian mindsets. Then, as in most of our professional baseball and basketball championships, we had a world championship event where the teams came from the same country: the U.S. And so I wondered just how narcissistic does America come off to the world.
Though those who are proud to be American patriots might be offended by my musing, that would only confirm my thoughts. After all, how many nations currently bill themselves as the greatest nation in the history of mankind? How many nations have a significant percentage of their population who believe that the world would fall into tyranny and disarray without their existence? And how many of us American citizens get significantly offended when their fellow citizens or other people question the image that we have of our country? How many of us have either said or heard the phrase, 'America, love it or leave it'? Are we willing to admit that our nation has a significant problem with narcissism because of what we believe and insist that others think about us?
I then reflected on the fans. Of course, the fans from neither team are monolithic. But what we had there was a large portion of those fans who paid thousands of dollars per ticket and dressed up in ways that showed support for our team. In Philadelphia, the city was preparing for a celebration in case the Eagles won by trying treat the light poles so that no one would climb them. Some other American cities have had near riot conditions when their teams won "world championships.'
All of the ways that the fans behaved and were prepared to behave made me wonder if we Americans are living more vicariously than we should or realize. By that I mean that we are finding more significance in the achievements by and recognition of our favorite entertainment and sports heroes or other elites than we find in what we accomplish or in how we live.
I finally was wondering if our nation would improve if all of the hype and attention that we put into entertainment events like the Super Bowl were put into the proper education of our young people, especially our young people who live in economically depressed areas. What if we showed more interest in and care for those young people than we show in our favorite entertainers? What if more of us paid more attention to national and world events that hurt the lives of many people than the information we pay to events like the Super Bowl? What if more of us valued learning more than we value being entertained? How much better would life be for many of our fellow Americans?
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