The Super Bowl

As I write this, humble and almost certainly UK-based reader, it's almost 4 hours since the Star Spangled Banner was crooned before the start of the Super Bowl game. As probably THE biggest fixture on the American sporting calendar, it's an occasion as much as it is a sporting event. Just for you, folks, I took copious notes and can share with you the full force of this thoroughly American Sunday afternoon.

The game kicks off with the usual stuff that you'd get at a massive sporting event in the UK: anthems, mascots, kids, military veterans, fly-pasts, the usual. Maybe the volume is a bit higher and so is the schmaltz. Here, some 100 year-old WW2 veterans (as it's the 100th year of the NFL) brought on the coin for the toss; I suggested they most likely wanted to be somewhere else, but Helen pointed out that at least one of them was pretty keen on getting in on the action.

Pretty soon, the game started. Now there's really two things which make the Super Bowl different to just another big game: firstly it's a commercial opportunity, with special, star-studded, high-budget TV adverts embedded in the game. Of course, there are a lot of these, because the game starts and stops a lot. Famously, back in 1984, Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh with a Super Bowl ad directed by Ridley Scott, but we didn't see anything quite on that scale. Generally it seemed the ads veered towards quantity rather than quality, packing in celebrities through ever-accelerating jump cuts, with high speed knowing winks to American popular culture which mostly went over my head. The ads were for companies as diverse as Walmart, Porsche, and even Google. Compared to normal TV adverts here (which most typically are for either what would be prescription drugs in the UK, or personal injury lawyers), they were definitely unusual.

The first half was closely matched, with Kansas City clearly having the advantage in the first quarter, and San Francisco pulling it back in the second.

And then there's the famous half-time show. This is famous for very high-profile pop musicians doing their thing. Again, rather than quality it seemed like we'd gone for quantity - the 13 minute show was a platform for the two big stars (Shakira and Jennifer Lopez - nope, I'm not tremendously familiar with their oeuvre either) to play 30 seconds of each of their hits before switching to the next one. So in 6 minutes we had Shakira singing; Shakira strapping on a rather fetching Gibson Firebird to belt out something else (hmmm, Firebirds are cool; maybe I need another Firebird...); Shakira threatening to murder Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, but blessedly changing course after a couple of bars; Shakira bashing the drums on another number. Apparently, Jennifer Lopez and some bloke in a hoodie were on next, but by this point I'd got bored and started work on the washing up. It was exhausting to watch, and kinda disorienting if I'm honest.

The second half started with San Francisco pressing into the lead, before in the final quarter, Kansas City got their passing game going and finally ran out well deserved winners. It was great to experience this American institution in real-time; I can't say that I'll be watching next year unless the local team happen to be in it, but hey, got to do it once. Well done Chiefs!