The Bowl That Runneth Over

The Age

Monday January 29, 1996

New York, Sunday.

To be honest, I find it hard to take seriously a sport with a position called tight end. Especially when it also involves players in helmets and padding, coaches using headsets, and referees wearing striped pyjama tops.

I also believe that balls should be more or less round and not have pointy ends, no matter how tight. And that sporting events should not be named after vessels for breakfast cereal.

For these reasons I will be unable to get as carried away as most people here about today's big event (today's only event, to judge by the hype) - Super Bowl XXX.

The numerals mean 30, but I like to think they also signify Super Bowl X-cess.

Still, there's no avoiding it, and besides, nothing much else to do. A local Italian deli, a place that serves mammoth meat-balls on rolls, has had a sign up all week informing customers it will be closed from 4.30 this afternoon. Never mind meat-balls, there's a game to be watched.

And so, if children don't lynch me for switching off the kiddies' channel, I will settle down in front of the TV late today to further my education into American football.

Incidentally, why is it called football when the aim of the game is to throw it and the kickers have only cameo roles?

I won't feel guilty about not actually being at the game.

This is far more of a TV than live sporting event. One hundred and twenty five million people, the size of NBC's expected TV audience, can't be wrong. That's in the US alone - never mind all those in the other 187 countries that get the game.

Plus 375 radio stations.

I doubt that I'll bother with the 150 minutes of pre-game nonsense, everything from highlights of Super Bowls past to interviews with anyone remotely associated with the competing teams.

These are - ah, give me a moment - the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers. Cowboys? Get serious. But it's certainly a preferable name to the Buffalo Bills.

The game itself runs for just 60 minutes. The overall TV package lasts for 390. Herein lies the other truth about the Super Bowl: it's less a game than a chance for NBC to make a super pile of money. Ads during the game telecast sell for $1.5 million for each 30-second spot.

Papers even give guides to the ads. Writhe in envy, suckers, that you'll miss spots for products ranging from Kinko's, Breathe-Right, and Quaker State (which might either be Pennsylvania or porridge).

The reason papers have been analysing ads is that the game itself is widely tipped to be a dud, a Superbore. In recent years the biggest event in US sport - or, as USA Today has put it, ``the most compelling example of American culture and spectacle" - has been even more one-sided than AFL grand finals.

Dallas goes into today's game as clear favorites. Of 45 sportswriters polled by one journal, only six tipped Pittsburgh.

And one computer nerd with the appropriate software and nothing better to do punched in all the statistics and played the game 50,000 times. Dallas won 83 per cent of them. But the nerd has also declared there is potential for an upset. As they say here: go figure.

It is also expected to be a vigorous game, meaning that Pittsburgh's only chance of success may lie in breaking the limbs of its opponents. Dallas expects this; even relishes the prospect. One Dallas player, Nate Newton, spoke affectionately of one recent contest: ``It had `physical' written all over it. Over the edge. Nasty."

Newton, approximately the size of an average family home, wears a uniform carrying the numerals 61. This may either be his number or his neck measurement.

I need to work this out, because American sport is all about numbers. Your average sports fan chews up statistics the way cows take to grass. Thus Dallas is a 13.5 point favorite, goes into the game 14-4 compared with Pittsburgh's 13-5, and if you check the fine print you can get all the figures for things like rushes and yards gained and players' weights.

The weights are the only things I understand. Mrs Newton's little boy, incidentally, checks in at 320 lbs (145.5 kilograms).

I'm told that in time I will appreciate the nuances of this event; maybe even learn to love it. But as I sit down, with the compulsory accessories of beer and snack foods (sales of which - and antacids - soar this weekend) I will keep in mind the words of a former Dallas player, Duane Thomas.

Obviously a wise man, he said a while back: ``If this is the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?"

The Super Bowl will be televised today on Channel Two, from 10 am-2 pm, with a 10-minute news bulletin at midday.