February 10, 2025
Greetings from the rabid fan,
It’s the time of year when loyal readers (you both know who you are) come here for my annual review of the Superbowl, which I sometimes forget to write, which I think makes it semiannual. If not, I may need to apologize at least twice for what I didn’t write last year, which it seems I do biweekly, if that means twice a week. More or less, depending on if it is more, or less.
Let’s start out by acknowledging the game was a challenging first half, largely because I was on an airplane at the time. Turns out you can watch reruns of “Murder She Wrote” on Delta, but not the ultimate matchup in the NFL. (Actually, I don’t really know what other choices there were on Delta, because once I saw Angela Lansbury’s name, well how can you not watch?) I was flying back from the Arizona desert, so I had to desert my plans to watch the game. Poor planning on my part, so I got my just dessert.
Nevertheless, (a word designed to save two spaces in a sentence, for those with a penchant for brevity, which, I am told, is the soul of wit) I missed the first half of the game while enroute, or as the French say en route, (a word designed to add a space back in the sentence, probably proving the French have a poor sense of humor).
Moreover, (here I have regained the previously lost space) I was not able to enjoy the supposed insight the NFL experts are supposed to provide. I understand Tom Brady’s performance was described as ‘pedestrian’, by a pedestrian walking nearby.
Once I arrived home, I found that none of the three hundred TV subscriptions I am definitely paying for and not simply using someone one else’s subscription, (which would be a prescription for prosecution) included access to the broadcast of the Superbowl. This had a negative affect on my affect. By the time I found a Russian language station that broadcast the broadcast for free, the game was in the penultimate quarter of the ultimate NFL matchup. Somehow I thought that because they were broadcasting from Vladivostok, eleven hours in the future, I might be able to catch up.
I’ll pause here and apologize for not having any pithy commentary about the halftime (or half time) entertainment. Unless it was Angela Lansbury, I probably wouldn’t have anything relevant, let alone pithy, to offer.
As you know (unless you don’t subscribe to Russian language sports broadcasts) by this point in the game it was a rout. (Not to be confused with ‘route’, unless you pronounce ‘route’ like ‘root’ in which case you would not be confused, unless you also pronounce ‘rout’ like ‘root’, which is incorrect, whereas the root of this route would be moot.) (Note the use of ‘whereas’ to regain additional lost space)
I am not a regular viewer of professional football (I heard that sarcastic response) but when did it become normal for the announcers to phrases like ‘home run’ and ‘perfect strike’ as metaphors in football? Have we exhausted colorful language, other than in halftime performances? It seems like learned professional TV types
would have learned better, and refuse that kind of refuse.
At this point in today’s comments, I’d like to congratulate those of you who are reading this aloud to someone else (perhaps a bunkmate in a prison cell). It takes someone very articulate to articulate this kind of content and be content.
And so that brings us to what you have all been waiting for: the conclusion. Spoiler alert: I will not reveal the final score in last night’s Superbowl game, in case some of you are watching it on Russian language sports, where it is already Tuesday. (I may have misused the phrase ‘Spoiler alert)
Hope this finds you cheering with relief, but not bas relief, and not bass relief.
David
Copyright © 2025 David Smith
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