Arguably the biggest stage a professional athlete can get to. Everyone who’s ever set foot on a football field in their life has dreamed about taking part in the Super Bowl. At this point Super Bowl Sunday might as well be known as an American holiday because just about everyone in the nation celebrates it more extensively than most holidays. From a professional standpoint, this one game can make or break the millions of long, hard working hours put into an NFL player’s career. The motivation behind every single weight they lift and every single sprint they run is the hope of one day being able to say they were a Super Bowl champion. After it is all said and done, when their playing days are over and they stand before the Hall of Fame committee, a lot of times, getting inducted or not depends on if they have a Super Bowl ring. In essence, most people evaluate your career as an astounding success if you are given a green jacket and have a bust created of you in the National Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, but the majority of people would say the number one requirement to get in is having won a Super Bowl.
The first Super Bowl was played in 1966 and ever since it has been celebrated more excessively than any other professional sporting event in the US. Some people’s greatest and worst memories are from a Super Bowl party, depending on how their team did and how maybe even how much money they won or lost. NFL players themselves have even been known to get in on the partying if their team is not playing in the game. Some of the big name players take it as a responsibility to throw the biggest and most talked about Super Bowl party each year so they tend to put insane amounts of money into doing so. Super Bowl Sunday is actually famous for the absurd amounts of money that go into it year in and year out. This year’s game was the most expensive game in history. Advertisements for the half time show alone cost $3.5 million for 30 seconds. TV executives are confidently predicting that last year’s record television viewing figures of 111 million will be smashed.
I, for one, am not a big Super bowl party kind of guy. My ideal Super Bowl is sitting on the couch with my family and watching the game while enjoying some home cooked food. I have experienced my fair share of Super Bowl parties, and I have come to notice that the majority of them are more about the partying aspect than about the actual game itself. Being a huge football fan myself, I actually like to sit down and watch the game without being bothered by a bunch of rowdy people who have had a few too many drinks. One of my favorite parts of the Super Bowl, aside from the game itself, is actually the commercials. Saying that is a pretty big deal because I am one of those guys who immediately changes the channel as soon as I see a commercial and cannot stand when the game stops play to watch some advertisements. However, during the Super Bowl the greatest commercials come out because of the massive amounts of viewers who tune in. Companies put out millions of dollars to show their brand or logo for 30 seconds and therefore you know they are going to show their best stuff.
Super Bowl Sunday is a day that most people wait for all year long while they watch their team through the ups and downs of the regular season. Regardless of how you watch it, whether your partying all night and don’t even know who’s playing in the game, or you are sitting in front of the TV watching every single play while your heart is in your throat, just about everyone in the country will be going to bed that night saying ‘there’s always next year’…
