[Last year I attended Super Bowl XLIV and jotted down these thoughts on my plane ride home. The game this year was in Dallas, and I watched it with my family at my house — Mrs. Schaeffer makes top-notch chili I might add — but the sentiments remain the same…]
February, 2010.
On Sunday as we prepared to step out into the stands of Sun Life Stadium, I grabbed my friend’s arm and stopped him in his tracks. “I want you to savor this,” I said. “You’re about to enter the modern Coliseum. You are today’s Roman citizen.” Now, I admit it’s a cliché observation. Yet just because it’s oft repeated, doesn’t make it any less true…perhaps the opposite. I was impressing upon him that he is really a part of history. That we were about to join the epicenter of that new Rome. The pomp. The pageantry. The overwhelming sense of the circus of antiquity come to life once again in a modern age. As a testament to US hard power our eyes were drawn skyward by the ear-splitting banshee screech of F-15s in “finger four” formation slicing through the clear twilight above us. Later, as I watched the coin toss commence in mid-field, I was half-expecting the Colts and Saints players to turn towards some unseen central figure and call out in unison “those who are about to die salute you!”
Before I took my seat to enjoy the first of many $10+ beers, I couldn’t help but look all around at the teeming mass of which I was a part and ask: is this what it was like for the Romans of old? They say history may not repeat, but it does rhyme. When we look back on the rise and fall of Rome and note the timeline of its decline, one doubts that those hooting for blood in the stands in the great gladiatorial contests in their day realized that they were citizens of an empire that was unraveling in decay. That, although in their own lives things may have seemed quite intact, something underneath supporting it all was rotting away. That their great nation was sinking under the weight of its political mismanagement and cronyism, the unsustainable burden of profligate government spending at home while maintaining a military presence to guard porous imperial frontiers far too widespread for any one nation to control. In its cultural body, the deterioration of core values that make a society viable was well underway. Deviancy was being continually defined down (as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan would say) and taking the once great Republic with it.
A record 106 million people watched the game last year. (This year that figure swelled to 111 million…a new record yet again). There is a certain feverish “bread and circuses” aspect of the weekend. Granted, this is not an event put on by the government to placate a restless mob. The NFL is very much a for-profit enterprise. And with 15 million Americans unemployed, the need for a distraction from hard times that the Super Bowl product provides may be more in demand than usual, hence the stellar ratings. Caesar provided amusement to his subjects and they in turn remained loyal and acquiescent. The free market provided this year’s diversion from the day-to-day.
Perhaps I can take comfort in the notion that our social mores are still far apart from those of Rome in a very significant way. Our mainstream society’s tenets are fundamentally grounded in respect for the rights of the individual; we place a celestial value on humanity. The day-to-day grind of a citizen in even supposedly civilized Roman times was a far more brutal affair and life was cheap, short and often painful in ways we cannot fathom. It was a also society filled with slaves who were, to the free Roman, the walking dead whose value expired when they could no longer work or, in the case of their amphitheatre, entertain the mob. Our culture, on the other hand, idolizes our modern gladiators, showering them with riches and affection–some would argue too much so. Regardless, they live the best of lives our material society can offer. All so that the circus can go on for the rest of us in the gallery.
In the 2000 movie Gladiator, director Ridely Scott used the modern football stadium as his model to capture the experience of the Coliseum in all its glory. I hope that the parallels between ancient Rome and the present day United States end there. But this weekend, as I saw first hand the central expression of who we are as a people revealed in all its sensory overload, I could not help but reflect on that Roman slave who whispers in the conqueror’s ear at the height of his triumph: “All glory is fleeting.”
Do not get me wrong. I am an avid football fan and think the NFL is one of the best run organizations in the world. I love the game, in fact, and believe that participation in organized sports is an essential ingredient to anyone’s development as a person of character. But the Super Bowl is so much more than just four quarters of football now. It is the event of the year in the United States. A week long party culminating in a national mass migration via the television to whatever venue is playing the part of de facto Coliseum for the day. It is not the NFL’s offering that makes me wonder about who we are, but rather our reception of the product itself. A man who tortures dogs, for example, is still cheered by an adoring throng because he can throw a wicked spiral. Maybe next year all will be forgiven entirely if the Eagles win the Lombardy Trophy. If so, what does this say about us as a people?
Senatus Populusque Americanus!
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