Super Bowl more than just a game

Lamar Hunt, the legendary Kansas City Chiefs owner, originally intended for the “Super Bowl” name to be temporary.

He thought the name was silly, and used it just as a holdover. Eventually, it’d be replaced with something bigger, something better.

His vision evolved into one of the watershed cultural events in America, demonstrating how as a society we focus on expansion, improvement and eventual perfection of basic ideas. Super Bowl I had a TV audience of 51 million and an attendance of 61,496.

Compare that to the 111 million who watched Super Bowl XLV on Sunday, making it the highest-rated television event in U.S. history. The attendance was 103,129 — the second highest in Super Bowl history.

The Super Bowl has become a larger-than-life event not because of the magnitude of the game, but because of the glitz and glamour that accompany it.

The lavish parties in the week leading up to the game are littered with celebrities and sponsored by the top companies — Playboy and ESPN held parties last week.

Top American companies are paying between $2.5 and $2.8 million for a 30-second advertisement.

Typically, people avoid commercials, but during the Super Bowl the commercials are almost as big a draw as the game itself.

The recap of the advertisements becomes national discussion because some people like their Doritos more than others.

Casual fans take sides, rooting passionately for a team that they have no allegiance to. They probably don’t even know five players on the roster.

When Packers wide receiver Jordy Nelson caught a superb touchdown pass, the room I was watching in exploded. Then, the conversation turned to, “Who is Jordy Nelson?” Good question.

It seems the game takes a backseat for most people, because they choose to focus on the halftime show, the commercials, the food or even the alcohol, all of which have made the Super Bowl an unofficial national holiday.

The game becomes instant watercooler talk and gives people common ground. It’s a championship game that, somehow, is not all about the game itself — and that has led to a massive audience, because there is something for everyone.

While I might be intently watching the actual game, my little sister will be eagerly waiting for the Black Eyed Peas to perform their horrendous rendition of “Sweet Child o’Mine.”

The crowds for these Super Bowl viewing parties are incredibly diverse in demographic and age, yet they all huddle around the TV watching the same program.

This is a unique event in modern America, where a family usually can rarely agree on what to watch because of the widened availability of channels.

The Super Bowl, at its core, is a football game. But it’s so much more than that. If it were just about the result of a football game, 111 million people wouldn’t be watching it. This is more than just football.

It’s about people taking a vested interest in a sport they criticize for being brutish and violent for the other 364 days of the year.

Definitely not what Lamar Hunt had in mind.

Cyrus Behzadi is a freshman majoring in communication. His column, “The Extra Point,” runs Wednesdays.