"Hail, Mary" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Hail, Mary

It’s not quite a tradition but more than once my pal Peter and I have been on his 34-foot sailboat cruising The Bay on Superbowl Sunday. And yes, it did give me a feeling of moral superiority. I like not being one of the masses, especially when it comes to spectating, and there aren’t a lot greater thrills than sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge on a small boat.

This year, the actual sporting contest was almost eclipsed by all the hoohah regarding the half-time show. Shelved long ago were plans for showing Janet Jackson’s other breast, and for most of the past year there has been an incessant palaver about how to vanilla-ize the 2005 game.

Said the house organ of the national halls of power, the Washington Post, "NFL Makes Play for Decency / Planners of this year's big game have gone to extremes to make it G-rated." Yeah, right, and then some player will clothesline the kicker. It’s such a violent game. People are hurt deliberately as a matter of course. In fact the idea is to hit with such force as to jar balls loose. And they call this family entertainment.

The headlines for the week prior were fleshy with league officials and religion zealots throwing Hail Mary’s at what was once just a football game but has been transmogrified into a semi-ecclesiastical national annual confab of screaming drunks coated in melted cheese watching over-priced commercials.

Well that’s the whole point, isn’t it? At least that’s what one advertising yahoo alleged...that people watch the game for the commercials. At last, the vast wasteland of television is nirvana. Or at least pricey. Thirty second spots were going for over $2.4 million a pop. In truth, there were some incredible commercials debuted during the Superbowl way back when, but like everything else in life, when imitation is viewed as flattery, it usually simply falls flat. No doubt there would be plenty of pick-me-up’s offered by Cialis, Viagra and Levitra.

That was all speculation, however. Peter being outta town, I perambulated by The Bay, enjoying temperatures nudging past sixty. It was a wonderful time to be out, on the water or just for a walk, since some 90 million folks were ensconced in couches and bars before often very wide television sets contemplating the exchange of the pigskin.

I shouldn’t disparage the pleasure that so many take in anticipating and then actually watching duh big game, but it’s my contrarian nature. And I wouldn’t want to throw out an otherwise perfectly on target column.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.