With the pandemic still very much around, we need something good in our lives, even if it’s something as trivial as a football game.
I didn’t think the NFL would make it to the finish line this season. I thought COVID-19 would gang tackle the league, leaving the nation without the religious experience known as the Super Bowl for the first time in history. But here we are, a few days out from the big event, and barring a super-spreader team meeting by the Chiefs or the Buccaneers, Super Bowl LV will take place Sunday. I think we all can say amen to that. We need this. We deserve it. Oh, believe me, I get it. It’s just a game, played by violent, slobbering men who add nothing to public discourse, unless the discourse is about whether a 350-pound lineman fast enough to run you down and sit on you until you’ve stopped breathing is capable of being body shamed. Answer: Not if you know what’s good for you. But in our isolation, as we wait out the storm of a pandemic and hope new virus variants don’t win the day, we need something good in our lives, even if it’s something as trivial as a football game. Maybe triviality is exactly what we need. Patrick Mahomes, the phenom, wants what Tom Brady, the old man, has. He wants Brady’s legacy of being the winningest quarterback of all time. But before he can get to the six Super Bowl rings Brady has, he needs to get to two first. Can Mahomes do that? Can he lead the Chiefs to their second straight victory in the big game? I’d advise you to get completely caught up in this discussion, to blow it out of proportion so that it resembles the emotions normally reserved for climate-change debates.
