Professional sports in this country can be understood in phases. As more Americans had leisure time in the 1920s, baseball became the public's national pastime and an opportunity for people to distract themselves from the humdrum of the workday. Sports continued to grow along with popular culture and it has become ingrained into the everyday lives of the American public. The greatest moments in sports history have been documented in newspapers, radio shows, television and hall of fame museums. The modern era of sports combines advanced technological innovation with modern medicine to create a product that is of the highest quality. Athletes dominate the market with their shoes, advertisement deals and platforms, sometimes to the extent where they supersede the sport itself. But on that fateful day every February, the biggest spectacle in American sports eclipses everything else.
The Super Bowl is the NFL’s biggest game. It is a championship game unlike any other, and in its 56-year history, the Super Bowl has become a cultural event that transcends football — and sports more broadly. Despite the NFL constantly attracting controversy because of its violent and conservative nature, the Super Bowl might offer a positive benefit to American society.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have at least passive knowledge of the Super Bowl. Only one-third of Americans say they enjoy watching football, yet the word holds a certain cultural significance. The Super Bowl garners around 100 million views per broadcast. To put that into perspective, only 160 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election. The cultural force that the Super Bowl has become is undeniable, even if one loathes the game of football with every fiber of their being.
How does the Super Bowl accomplish such a feat? It ties together American popular culture like nothing else. It’s about sports, obviously, but it’s also about music, with the halftime show self-promoting as the “Biggest Show of the Year,” and it's about gambling, with sports betting becoming legal in more places across the country.
It’s also about consumption, as Americans’ love of consumerism has spawned Super Bowl commercials, by far the most expensive advertising slots of the year on television. They have become an art form — one of capitalist intrigue.
For many, though, the Super Bowl is about coming together. It’s about sitting down with your family, friends, neighbors or people you just met at a bar and enjoying whatever it is you want to enjoy about the event. Whether that’s the music of Dr. Dre, Eminem and Mary J. Blige, a 30-second commercial for shampoo or the most exciting and competitive football game of the year, at least we can watch it together.
No, the Super Bowl will not mend America’s many wounds. Division runs a lot deeper than football. But we should cherish the cultural moments sports gives to us. It’s hard to find them anywhere else.
