Programming Note: Watch Super Bowl XLVI live, Sunday at 3 p.m. on NBCSports.com. Pregame simulcast will kick off at 11 a.m.
Whatever happens Sunday in Indianapolis, it had better be the best whatever in Super Bowl history. Because the lead-in has been one of the worst in Super Bowl history.
And yes, the lead-in matters, more than ever. Now that the Super Bowl is essentially a trade show, much like the Final Four, the buildup is both anticipated and expected.
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But this? Well, lets put it this way. Thursdays Madonna press conference reminded us mostly that being the halftime act at the Super Bowl is the last audition for a regular spot in the rotation for The View. It used to guarantee you the Secret Square back when Hollywood Squares was the dominant game show in the land, and it remains the gateway to assured cultural irrelevance for our increasingly young demographic.
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And Madonna was a high point.
Antrel Rolle and Jason Pierre-Paul provided only intermittent and unconvincing smack. Bill Belichick dismissed a Spygate quaestion with a terse six-word answer; Yeah, weve moved on past that. A number of writers, bored out of their eyelids, tried to inflate a debate about whether Tom Brady was overrated or better than Joe Montana. The Matthew BroderickFerris Bueller ad was released early in the week and dismissed as a poor knockoff. Media Day was the usual collection of costumes and zaftig Hispanic TV reporters and players pretending to have fun with what has become another tedious two-hour exercise. Indianapolis failed to provide rotten, traffic-crushing event-destroying weather, preferring to be good old solid friendly Indianapolis.
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And Peyton Manning dominated the headlines both in town and nationally as the injured representative of a team that fell only wins short of a playoff berth, trying to convince his boss that hes worth a 28 million check in March while keeping Andrew Luck in his place.
This is what happened to the Super Bowl in Indianapolis: It became a gigantic local story, with strangers as the backdrop. The biggest game-related story was the way the Patriots simulated sitting in their locker room for the half-hour halftime.
Simulated sitting. We are so doomed.
With all this to trumpet Sunday, the pressure on the game itself to be beyond spectacular has been ratcheted forward considerably. Mario Manningham needs to out-Tyree David Tyree and catch a touchdown pass on 3rd and 21 with his teeth. Brady needs to become the first quarterback in history to complete more passes than he throws. Eli Manning has to escape a pass rush by knocking out Vince Wilfork. Julian Edelman has to become the first player ever to score catching a pass and intercepting one. The game needs to go into overtime, tied at 48, and break the mythical five-hour barrier. Belichick has to have a laughing fit on the sidelines, and Giants coach Tom Coughlin to has saw a woman in half during a time out.
The game, frankly, has to beat the commercials and the halftime show all to hell and back. It is hard to conjure all the things the game has to be to trump the week that led up to it.
This could be a good thing, of course. Maybe Super Bowl Week is being slowly deconstructed without us realizing it. Maybe the NFLs party division is finding out that absurd spectacle demands a bigger stage than central Indiana. Maybe the game itself is making a comeback.
But nahhh. America never got rich betting on common sense. This is more likely just a hiccup, and next year in New Orleans will be the bacchanal to end all bacchanals. And the halftime show will be Michael Buble.
Michael Buble. We are so doomed.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area.