HT Home / Blogs Home > Desi in DC / America, world / It’s an event, just a big party or something more?

Being new to American Football last year, I was puzzled by the mass hysteria in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, the final match of the championship season.

Everyone wanted to be somewhere special the Super Bowl.

Where was I going to be?

Home, I had said to myself. Where else? That’s where I was, at home, when India won the T-20 World Cup (wait, was I at work?).

So, what’s so special about the Super Bowl?

Anyhow, I stayed home, while my family went over my son’s friend’s home for a pizza-and-coke party, with more children and more grown-ups.

I stayed home and watched, with no special excitement. I didn’t know to cheer or curse, or what to appreciate or denounce. But I did enjoy show for what it was, a spectacle.

But did I miss something? I did.

The Super Bowl is not simply a finals match, I have begun to understand. It’s an event, a festival, that everyone plans about days and weeks in advance — you have to be somewhere special, doing something special.

It’s like watching the cricket world cup final. But don’t treat it like a do-or-die game. It’s an event that must be celebrated.

And here is the best part: you must celebrate it even if your team didn’t qualify. That will tough for some of us, who lose interest in the cricket world cup falls when India gets knocked out.

The Super Bowl remains the Super Bowl even without the favourite teams. It’s just the occasion and perhaps the spectacle that it is that makes it hard to not celebrate.

The White House usually hosts a party for the President’s friends and family, with a few rivals and critics thrown in — pictures of the party are known to have made news.

President Barack Obama’s first Super Bowl party was talked about for a long time. He was so focussed on the game, he ignored the party’s other purpose: political schmoozing.

Companies spend millions on marketing campaigns around the Super Bowl — most of it going into special ads that are aired during the game — try everything possible to get noticed.

A popular reality TV show — American Idol’s rival — had a chance to using at the Super Bowl as the top prize, among other things such as singing contracts.

Indianapolis, which is hosting Super Bowl XLVI (46 according to Arabic numerals — Super Bowl always goes with Roman numerals, there are reasons for it, but let’s not go into them here), struggling for parking space. Not for the thousands of fans driving to the game, but the super-rich who are flying in on their private planes.

The city’s airfield is going to fall short, administrator are worrying.

Everyone is going to be somewhere, and guess where I am going to be for this Super Bowl?