OLD DAYS
By Arthur Vidro
The first Super Bowl that I watched even a portion of is now known as Super Bowl IV, in which the Kansas City Chiefs upset my beloved Minnesota Vikings.
But at the time it wasn’t called a Super Bowl. Those first four Super Bowls were known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
That’s when the American Football League (AFL) champion would play against the champion of the National Football League (NFL).
The AFL teams never played against the NFL teams. Until the first Super Bowl. And then never again except for the three following Super Bowls.
Until the late 1960s, the top two teams in the NFL played in the league championship game, one week after the season ended. No playoff games. Just a championship game. In December.
When the AFL and NFL merged, the AFL had 10 teams, the NFL 16.
After the Super Bowl era began, the NFL decreed two weeks of playoffs to follow the regular season, to select the participants in the big game.
In 1978 the 14-game season grew to 16 games and is now at 17 games, plus each team has a bye week (unheard of back then) so the 17 games are spread over 18 weeks. And now there are three weeks of playoffs, and then one week of total inactivity (wish I knew why) and only then comes the Super Bowl. All this hoopla has meant the NFL championship game no longer takes place in December, or even in January. Now it’s in February.
Much of the nation treats the event as a party. Most of the TV-viewing population watches it. Even if they’re not football fans. Even if they don’t care one whit who wins the game.
In the old days, you watched the Super Bowl only if you cared about football. For it was just a football game.
Now it’s a spectacle.
It hasn’t just been pushed back in the calendar. It’s also been pushed to later in the day.
The Super Bowl did not begin as a prime time event. It was played more or less at the same time as normal football games. Which always started in daylight.
The kickoff in Super Bowl X (Jan. 18, 1976) was 2:14 eastern time, which means folks on the West Coast saw the opening kickoff at 11:14 a.m. their time. Some of them hadn’t stumbled out of bed yet. Here on the East Coast, there was still enough daylight at halftime that my friends Greg and Jimmy and I went outside to toss a football around.
Now to see the end of the game there are kids (and some adults) staying up past their bedtime.
There was no all-day coverage then. No hours-long pregame show.
The first few Super Bowls, the broadcasting networks didn’t even save the film; instead they taped over it.
Nobody expected the annual game to become a mania or near religion.
It was just a normal game, with the usual commercials. No commercials added for profit’s sake. No extension of halftime for profit’s sake.
Nowadays, commercials are created to debut on the telecast. Some people ignore the game but watch the commercials. Some run to their computers and rate each commercial. Even newspapers rate the game’s commercials. (Traditionalists don’t care one whit about the commercials.)
At first the halftime shows were normal ones. The first two Super Bowls featured the Grambling State University Marching Band.
In Super Bowl VII the halftime show was the University of Michigan Marching Band, Woody Herman, and (one of my favorites) Andy Williams.
In Super Bowl IX the halftime show was a tribute to Duke Ellington, featuring Mercer Ellington (Duke’s son) and the Grambling State University Band.
At Super Bowl XIV (January 20, 1980) the halftime show featured s tribute to the Big Band era.
Eventually the Super Bowl halftime shows changed. Now they feature amplified music, performers hopping up and down unneeded staircases, and beefy dancers bopping behind them. It seems no show can be considered entertaining unless it features fireworks (a disaster waiting to happen), costume changes, extravagant sets, and performers who gyrate, strut, snarl, or scream.
In short, the halftime show now aims for spectacle over substance.
It’s not just the halftime show. The game itself has changed.
Now there are taunts and celebrations that years ago would have drawn penalty flags. Also, teams used to run the ball far more often than they passed. But over the decades the NFL crafted rule changes to spur more passing. Some old-timers regard football as a game mostly of blocking and tackling. But nowadays teams tend to pass the ball far more than run it.
To illustrate, in Super Bowl IV, the Chiefs ran 42 times and dropped back to pass 20 times en route to upsetting the Vikings.
In Super Bowl VIII the Miami Dolphins, while defeating my beloved Vikings, ran the ball 53 times and dropped back to pass just 8 times.
In Super Bowl IX (to me the greatest ever) the Pittsburgh Steelers, while defeating my beloved Vikings, ran the ball 57 times and dropped back to pass 16 times.
In Super Bowl XI, the Oakland Raiders ran 52 times and dropped back to pass 21 times, en route to defeating my beloved Vikings.
I won’t be watching this Sunday’s Super Bowl. I don’t wish to experience what the game has become. Or to join merry-makers getting themselves drunk.
I’ll wait until the Super Bowl brings back the marching bands, the swing music, or the Minnesota Vikings.