Because You Never Asked

 

(2/09)

     I’ve written about the Super Bowl before (see essays “The Super Bowl”, “The Super Bowl Revisited”, and “Janet’s Boob”). In all those essays, the sporting contest itself played a secondary role to the socio-cultural ramifications of the Big Game. That’s what I do. I’m a chicken soup philosopher, not a sports writer.

     But the game this year was so good; it was so much what a game in any sport should be; it was so much what football was designed to be, I’ll turn into a sports writer for it. This essay will be primarily about the game. I might wander off here and there --- because that’s what I do.

     As I sit here a day and a half later, trying to put my thoughts together for this piece, the first thing that pops into my mind is “The Run”. The Run was made by a fellow named Harrison for the white team, who intercepted a short pass from the red team on the goal line he was defending. There was almost no time left in the first half. The red team was about to take the lead as the half ended. Things were looking bleak for the white team.

     And oh, yeah --- he then took the ball back 100 yards for a touchdown. He turned things around big time.

     But that is not why The Run is The Run. You had to see The Run, and you had to see it live. You had to not know The Run would end up being The Run, in order for it to be The Run. The Run is The Run much more for the deed itself then for the situation it evolved in.

     From the time the red team snapped the ball to the moment Harrison ended up in the far end zone, could not have consumed more than 20 seconds of eternity --- 20 seconds that felt like Marco Polo’s trip to China. I did not know who Harrison was before this Super Bowl. On a battlefield like this, even the most religious football fan would be hard pressed to know who had intercepted the pass as it happened. By the time he with the ball had fought his way from Venice to --- let’s say Asia Minor, I was startled to realize he was wearing #92. This meant he was a BIG GUY! As he made his way through Central Asia and on into Persia, his speed and dexterity, given his size, seemed to be fictional. For the whole tortured odyssey, Harrison was never operating in open space, was never clear of anything, was never in a place where one could say he was going to make it. He was pinned to the sideline on his right flank and constantly under enemy attack from all other flanks. It was hand to hand combat, house to house fighting, all the way down the field. He outran some, fought off some others, put some little guy moves on a few more, and used his weakly positioned support convoy to full advantage.

     He made history.

     The fact that a man of Harrison’s size had done this, rather than the usual stable of sinewy greyhounds more associated with such deeds, led me to ponder the rest of the gene pool participating in the game. It soon became evident that the evolution of the sport was producing a whole species of Harrison types. The greyhounds had almost become extinct. Except for the down linemen, who are elephants, everyone else on the field seemed to be a pit bull --- in varying sizes --- but pit bulls just the same: stout, thick, square, bunched up bulky muscled --- and vicious (how logical the Michael Vick story becomes). You’d have to believe storks deliver babies to not understand there’s a lot of modern chemistry being applied out there. (See essay, “Steroids and Barry”).

     The other play in this Super Bowl that etched itself into permanent history for me, was made by a guy named Larry Fitzgerald, of the red team. Fitzgerald was perhaps the closest thing on the field to that endangered species of greyhounds just alluded to. But, “upon further review”, even someone like him seems to have evolved away from this model.

     Before proceeding, it is relevant to mention I watched the game with 6 or 7 others, all males, none of whose sexual preference could be called into doubt. The testosterone level in evidence could securely be called normal, if not up to the levels reached by the crowd Jim Rome hangs around with. Suffice it to say, the sight of a perky female breast would not go unnoticed here (or any other female breast).

     Why do I bring this up?

     About a half hour into the game, someone in the room was heard to say, “look at the ass on that guy”. He was referring to Larry Fitzgerald.

     I’ll confess: I had already said something similar to myself before such verbal utterance. It is an uncommon ass, an exaggeration of height, bulk, firmness and round rump symmetry that could only exist in a Playboy cartoon. It was the kind of ass that would be sexy on either gender --- and everything in between. It is not a greyhound’s ass --- but there can be no doubt such an ass is highly conducive to running very fast.

     Fitzgerald is a wide receiver. He’s the kind of player any defending team must account for at all times. If a team doesn’t have a player like Fitzgerald, chances are their offense is not very good. It means the defense can concentrate on other things. It means the defense can bunch in more and wreak havoc in close quarters. But a Fitzgerald changes that. He’s the guy you can’t let loose. He’s the guy you have to keep in front of you. He occupies the attention of more than one player on every play. He makes the defensive backs play further up the field. He opens space for others ---

     and if you relax for a nano-second ---

     Although Fitzgerald had shown some protagonism in Super Bowl XLIII, the white team had pretty much accomplished their mission of not letting him get away. They had never trailed and seemed to have everything under control with about 3 minutes left. The red team had the ball 60 yards from the end zone and was showing little inclination of being able to steal the game from the white team’s vaunted defense. The white team  had maintained the lead the whole game, and maybe they relaxed an imperceptibly measurable amount.

     Fatal!

     A player like Fitzgerald is of little worth if he doesn’t have a quarterback who can get him the ball. The red team has an old warrior quarterback named Kurt Warner, who’s shown he can do that for a decade now. With less than 3 minutes left, he found Fitzgerald about 20 yards down the field and got him the ball in perfect stride. There were three white defenders around him, but they were poorly aligned and had let him have too much space. Perhaps they were no more than a quarter second late, but I’d guess all 3 defenders knew they’d been had almost immediately, that the bank had been robbed and the thief was going to get away.

     Like an express train rumbling through a New York subway station, Fitzgerald streaked between 2 of the beaten white team players and headed uptown. The surprised  defenders, being the good football players they are, gave chase.

     Have you ever seen those cute little sausage races they have in Milwaukee during the baseball season? That is what the white team players looked like running after the rocket-like Fitzgerald. No contest. All they got was an excellent view of that preposterous ass. He arrived untouched.

     So there you are, game over, the red team wins.

     Of course, we all know that did not happen, that the white team has great players as well, that they pulled it out with some remarkable stuff of their own. But for some inexplicable reason, that seemingly impossible play to win the game had less impact on me. Maybe it’s because I had no rooting interest in the game. But as I sit here examining my feelings --- perhaps it has more to do with the foreseeable. We all knew the white team would mount some kind of challenge, that it could very well come down to what it did, regardless of whether they pulled it off or not.

     But the plays made by Harrison and Fitzgerald were like Acts of God. They were like that unexpected thunderclap that hits too close and leaves you tingling all over.

     Those 2 plays were my Super Bowl XLIII.

     Relevant Material: --- “a game played by creatures so big, so fast, so brutally fierce, that the rest of us mere mortals might wonder if these beings are really members of our own species. (Perhaps it is time to create a new evolutionary category for such life forms; “Sado-Maso Carnivoman”?)”. From the essay “The Super Bowl”, from the book of essays, Because You Never Asked, by this writer.