This Super Sunday's For You

For all the hype about the ads, Super Bowl Sunday is shaping up to be extremely anticlimactic, unless you’re an executive that works for a beer manufacturer.

The big Super Bowl news is two-headed: first, Freddie Mitchell, a non-starting wide receiver for the Eagles, was trash-talking – the week before the Super Bowl – about how porous the Patriots’ secondary is and how he’d like to take advantage of Rodney Harrison, who in his opinion is an especially weak link in the Patriots’ pass defense chain.

What is this, the NBA? A sneaker commercial?

This is the biggest one-off game of the year, and these assholes – not even starters, mind you – do more talking the week before the game then they do all year? If the guy has the onions to back it up on the field, then he’s got the right to speak; if not, someone should really make sure he gets hit and doesn’t get up.

The second of the two-headed monster that is Super Bowl week is the news that Terrell Owens practiced today. He had a good practice, according to Coach Andy Reid. He’s not limping, says ESPN. And he seems to be running well, says FoxSports.

Who gives a shit?

Unless he’s the President, I couldn’t care less if his heart rate dropped to a dangerously low level tomorrow and then was chugging at 180 beats a minute by Thursday. The guy either will play or he won’t come Sunday, and this masturbatory, futile speculation really amazes me. Grown men who actually somehow, for some reason, care about whether Terrell Owens plays or not. I’m not referring to the people who are gambling five or six dollar figures on the game: I’m referring to people who don’t have a spare kidney, a lung transplant or their first-born son’s adoption on the line. Who cares?

The last time the Giants were in the Super Bowl, they were dispatched fairly quickly by the Baltimore Ravens, and despite our excitement over the game (prior to its commencement), I’ve found that, yeah, the ads are fun, but getting an erection over a commercial – unless you’re Bob Dole, or you really dig Pepsi – is sad (yes, it's sadder when you wish you could but you can't). Advertisements, by definition, are fillers to occupy the space between things that – in theory – are meaningful. When the space between what has meaning becomes meaningful as well, it’s time to throw out the baby with the bath-water. Or something like that. In the meantime, I will watch the game, odds are, at Brother Jimmy’s in NYC; mostly, of course, because the ESPNZone is too ‘sanitized’ and features too many tourists from middle America or elsewhere searching for a real “New York” experience. Although that last time, a teammate of mine, to whom we refer as “Meat,” clogged up two stalls (over a period of 45 minutes) thanks to three racks of ribs, a burger, an order of potato skins or onion rings (I don’t remember) and about 15 mugs of Brooklyn Lager. It would have been more poignant had he urinated on some of those middle America folk, so they could have gotten an actual New York experience rather than a mall-i-fied, sanitized, vanilla version thereof.

There’s always next year.

In the meantime, I’m keeping my eyes open for anyone who gets excited over hearing Terrell Owens updates. I’d love to hear how Terrell slipped and fell in the shower on rubber ducky and can’t play; but I’d much prefer he came back and played with his ankle at 50% and his mouth at 150% and the Eagles lost in a laugher.

But even better: he doesn’t play, his team loses and he doesn’t get the chance to prove his stupidity with a sideline interview.

Oh, and some guy from New York sneaks onto the field in Jacksonville (during a commercial) and urinates on him.

That would be a meaningful Super Bowl moment. I’d pay for a ticket to see that. At least I know I’d rather see that than Bob Dole hawking meds to alleviate erectile dysfunction.

Oh, why can’t Super Sunday come more than once a year? :-)