Macho Chef: Super Bowl

Okay, I'll admit it.  Each year, I only start paying attention to football about six weeks before the Super Bowl.

I don't know why it works out this way, but strange forces prompt me to join the rest of the nation as we all watch a group of grown men wearing plastic armor push an air-filled oblate spheroid across artificial grass while another similarly attired group does everything in their power to keep said spheroid from passing across an arbitrary line.

Why do we watch it?

I understand why the players like to compete.  There's still a kid in me that gets a kick out of playing King of the Hill with his sons.  But watching football?

Sure, there are the diehard football fans that seem unable to discuss anything else. I have friends who are among those folks who decorate their living room with logo-covered bobbleheads, football fashionistas who wear designer jerseys with their favorite player's number, or people who hang on every action of some overpaid athlete whose most endearing characteristic seems to be using his astronomical salary to land himself into the deepest pile of social doo-doo possible.

But then there are the regular folks like you and me.  How is it that the rest of us get sucked into the Super Bowl hype?

It's like somebody turns on a switch about six weeks before the game and the universe focuses on this distinctly American obsession.

Now the whole family is preparing for Sunday.  The boys are excited, because the only thing they hear their friends talk about is Sunday's game, and if you don't chime in about how awesome the Super Bowl is, then it is possibly a sign that you're a commie sympathizer who hates God and apple pie.

Even Mrs. Chef gets excited about it every year.  Which is weird, because I have to spend half the game explaining the rules, which I barely remember from my Little League days in the first place.

If you ever go to a Super Bowl Party, watching a group of fans discuss in serious tones how one team can get a first down after the commercial break is a little like watching cavemen discuss the best trepanning method to drill into some poor fellow's skull in order to release the headache demons.

As the big game approaches, my only hope is that it will be interesting.  We already know the commercials are going to be awesome, but they tend to leave an aftertaste and bellyache similar to what you get after you eat too much fast food.  The half-time show will be a bust, except for the possibility of a major screw-up or flash of nudity by the aging superstars putting it on.

The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the possibility of a tight game that comes down to one last play to close out the mythic stories of two teams.

I've seen that happen exactly once.

But the siren call of Super Bowl is echoing across the land, and I'll join the rest of the nation this Sunday in cheering people who are unable to hear my encouragement, eating fat-filled snacks, drinking beer and shouting epithets at the television.

Find some great Super Bowl snacks with the Macho Chef column at Fiddlehead Focus.com