I sat down at 7:47 with a beer and a plate of leftover meatloaf, ready to watch the National Football League play a football game, and the first thing that happened was a man in a turtleneck welcomed me to the Caesars Sportsbook Presents Visa Cashback Kickoff Powered by Verizon 5G Pregame, brought to me in part by Crown Royal, Frito-Lay, and the United States Air Force.
I counted eight sponsor reads before the coin toss. Eight. The coin itself was sponsored. The flip was sponsored. The replay of the flip was brought to us by State Farm, which I assume now also insures airborne quarters.
Then they did the ring ceremony. Now look — the Eagles won the Super Bowl, congratulations, get your rings. I’m not against a ring ceremony. My old coach, DiMaggio, used to hand out a single laminated certificate at the diner after a winning season and call it a banquet. We thought it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to us. He once skipped my certificate because I’d missed a block in October and made me wait until November to get it. Built character. Cost the school nothing.
This ring ceremony lasted thirty-eight minutes. I timed it. There was a string quartet. There was a poet — and I want to be very clear with you, I am not making this up — there was a poet who read a piece called “Brotherhood Is a Verb.” The cameras cut to Jason Kelce, who was crying, which is fine, Jason Kelce is allowed to cry, he has earned it, but then the cameras cut to a guy in section 134 who was also crying and I do not know that man and I do not know what he has earned.
Around the second commercial break my buddy Ray Kowalczyk called me. Ray played a year of arena ball in 1989 and brings it up at every wedding. He said, “Duke, are you watching this? They got a sommelier.” I said what. He said, “They cut to a sommelier. In the suite. Pairing wine with the trophy.” I told him I was on the same broadcast and I had not seen a sommelier and he said “You will,” and hung up.
Ray was right. There was a sommelier. His name was Bertrand.
Now, when the football finally started — and this is the part that kills me — the football was good. Genuinely good. It was a real game played by real men at full speed, and for about forty-five seconds at a time, between commercials for sports betting apps and commercials for fantasy apps and commercials for an app that lets you bet on whether the next commercial will be for a sports betting app, you could see the actual sport. Saquon ran somebody over. Jalen Hurts threw a ball that traveled like a missile. A linebacker hit a tight end so hard I felt it in my back teeth. That’s the game. That’s the thing they keep burying under the production.
I was at Murph’s watching the second half because my recliner gave out. Behind me was a kid, maybe twenty-three, who told his date that the Eagles were “a really cool franchise from a brand-equity standpoint.” I turned around. I couldn’t help it. I said, “Son, what does that mean.” He said it meant they had “strong cultural capital.” His date was nodding. I paid my tab.
Here’s the thing nobody at the league office wants to hear: the actual football is enough. It has always been enough. You don’t need a drone show. You don’t need a poet. You don’t need Bertrand. Coach DiMaggio used to walk onto the field with a clipboard and a thermos of coffee and we would have run through a brick wall for him. He once benched a kid for wearing wristbands. He thought wristbands were a sign of vanity. I’m not saying he was right about that. I’m saying he understood that the game was the game.
Ray called me again at 11:30 to tell me the postgame had a chef. I told him I’d seen enough. I went to bed.
Denise is bringing chili over Sunday for the early window. She says the recipe’s from a podcast. I’m choosing not to ask which one.