With NFL ratings up across the board, expect Super Bowl LIII to contend with the record-setting Super Bowl XLIX between the Patriots and Seahawks, which drew 114 million viewers. Which means there's one crucial decision you have to make beyond picking the Pats or Rams:
Where you will watch it.
Let's say at least 50 million of you are going to some kind of Super Bowl party, be it thrown by a neighbor, college buddy or in-laws. Every year, we endure the social and culinary minefields that come with choosing which Super Bowl bash we attend.
We don't know if the food will be any good — and, in some cases, if our cheap chum will ask us to pay for some of it — and we must do a scouting report on those who are joining us at the party.
But despite our reconnaissance, we are always surprised by a late scratch or last-second invitee who comes wholly unprepared, or unqualified. There's the gal with the yoga mat who has never watched a football game and is astonished that none of the men notice her. She makes lame jokes, asks what pass interference means and then takes interest in the TV only when Pepsi has a new, bejeweled spot, or when Katy Perry or Maroon 5 takes the halftime stage.
Call it chauvinism or diplomacy, but most men can forgive this woman. Although there are legions of passionate and educated female football fans, we understand the barbarism of the sport appeals more widely to men.
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But it's the guy who stumbles into the forest of humanity without a playbook. Perhaps he has a ponytail or man-bun, trapped inside skinny jeans in full stretch. Maybe he has a skateboard or a guitar, or both. He doesn't give one wit about the game. He simply comes because he knows it's the cool thing to do. Almost everyone he spoke to during this fortnight between the AFC and NFC title games and the Super Bowl has mentioned this mysterious football affair.
Like his friends, he does not watch football, but he can't go to their parties, so he calls a high school chum — anyone will do — and indirectly invites himself by asking this man he hasn't seen in 15 years what he's up to on Sunday. It's a sympathetic bait that usually gets a bite. As Americans, we wince at the idea of an adult watching the Super Bowl alone. To us, it's almost like a friend attending a funeral alone. He needs saving.
We think three hours around proper testosterone will convert man-bun to manhood, enlighten him on the athletic splendor of the NFL. Meanwhile, he boasts about the new grade of medical marijuana he scored, bemoans the fact that he didn't do his normal 5-mile run that morning and asks us if we want to see him play with a cover band the next Friday at some swanky, velvet-covered bar in the Village. (Then he shows us a picture of his obscenely attractive girlfriend, which leads us to momentary pause and praise.)
He passes on the pizza. He demurs on the wings. But he jumps on the celery, which he gently dips into bleu cheese. He strokes his guitar every few minutes, making an incongruous sound for any football fan. Maybe he stretches his quads for a few minutes, limbers up for, well, nothing. He's become such a distraction that we are now watching him instead of the game.
Your first impulse is to clutch that brown-colored bottle, and whiskey your way through the night. But you have to drive after the game. You want to lecture this harrowing hipster, but don't want to insult your host. You feel trapped. That's because you, not they, lost focus. Turn back to the game, sit with the people who actually watch the NFL before February.
The best cure for these sidebars is a great football game. If the Pats and Rams give us an epic contest, much like the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, then even this thin man with the guitar will start peering at the TV. When he sees everyone leaping from their seats and clapping and yelling at the flat-screen, this man with the man-bun will realize the Super Bowl really means something.
That's the handle. Rather than see these football aliens as antagonists, people to be ignored or squashed, school them on the nuanced beauty of football. Explain that Todd Gurley was once a star who has fallen a little, only to be replaced by that rolling Weeble with the beer belly named C.J. Anderson. Explain why Tom Brady is the GOAT, and then Brady will surely show him why at some point. Explain the biblical age difference between Bill Belichick and Sean McVay.
Despite what the cynics say, football in general (and the Super Bowl in particular) is a healing agent, a way to form a group hug in a world increasingly fractured by cultural and political strife. Football is our friend. Keep that in mind and you may just meet a new friend, if not a football fan. Even if he has a man-bun.
Follow Jason on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
