Opera is the place where a huge amplitude of emotions seems appropriate. It is beyond drama. It is, well, operatic. Somehow, watching Tom Brady’s press conference and the way he tried to console Welker about the non-catch made the Patriots more sympathetic to me than the Giants. Watching the Giants and their parade… well, more power to them. But there seems to be an unspoken agreement to treat the 4 point spread as if it were 100 to 0, as if the Patriots are nothing and the Giants everything.
As a first time “participant” (following football for the first time, since about mid-season) I threw myself into learning the rules, the penalties and at least some of the players, and, in the end, also threw myself right into all those operatic emotions, even if they weren’t totally constructed out of wishing for one team to win. The whole spectacle was suffused with Opera, not just about one character, and not just about one “house” playing out the unfolding scenario. Without deep affiliations, it was still a hope for a really breathtakingly good game, such as the Saints and 49ers playoff game that was instantly dubbed a “classic”.
During the Superbowl game, my affiliation slowly began to coalesce around the Patriots. The Giants were supremely competent. The Patriots were valiant. Maybe I was influenced by the story, the emotional dedication to “MHK”, which created a poignant aura around the Patriots that had me discover, rather than decide, that I was wishing them well, more and more, as the game progressed.
In the end, that game was less satisfying to me than the humdinger between the Saints and 49ers on Jan. 14th. And it was satisfying not because “my” team won – that’s the Saints, and they lost. At some point I’ll be able to say better why it was more satisfying, but it just was.
The Superbowl game was filled with suspense, but the shrillness of the victory, the comparatively low score, the relatively narrow margin of that low score, followed by the huge parade, with all its pandering to fans who are all out there, getting a boost to their own self-esteem…, hey go for it… but it seems less satisfying than the darkness and complications of the Patriots’ defeat.
It was still only one game, no matter how much meaning we want to ascribe to it as being the BIGGEST. It is still only one game, no matter how much hype we have coming down the pipelines at us to increase its meaning and significance into the realm of the superhuman. It’s still one game, as so many of them were really just one game. During the playoffs, each victory seemed to artificially create a greater gap between the winner and the vanquished than the reality seems to warrant. Of course, the hype is necessary for the giant machinery involved in the process, the industry, to work properly, no question about it. I have no problem with that, except to try to keep at least one foot, if not both feet (like Bradshaw) on the ground, and rooted in reality.
The Giants achieved something for that dimension of us as human that we can call “the personality” and we can only admire them for that, and I do – especially their coach, who seems like a Buddha compared to Bill Belichick’s CEO. But the Patriots have a chance to not only experience something, but to literally mine something, to go down, rather than rising up pyrotechnically as victors do, something more for the soul than for the personality. There is a reason it is called ‘the dark night of the soul.’ We can only wish them the best in doing that work, especially if it not merely about fixing things or getting “better.” Tom Brady was downright tender with Welker, and for that I admire him more than if he had made another three touchdowns.
An ESPN munchkin showed a video of Gronkowski dancing his ass off at a disco the night “after”. The ESPN munchkin sniffed that the Patriots fans likely think that Gronkowski should be sitting at home crying. I wonder what the munchkin actually knows about this kind of Opera, or about what Gronkowski was feeling, as his large young damaged frame flailed about on the dance floor.
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