O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
The Pats are back in the Super Bowl after seven long, languorous years without an appearance on the biggest of football’s stages.
And it is true: New England sports teams have experienced an embarrassment of riches in the 21st Century. Aside from the Patriots six Super Bowl rings (and now 10 Super Bowl appearances), the Red Sox have also won four World Series, the Celtics took two championships, and the Bruins won a Stanley Cup.
But for anyone my age, who grew up rooting for said New England teams, we paid our dues, especially for the 86 years with the Red Sox, and we deserve…
Okay, I might be wrong. Maybe New England is just the greatest sports region in the United States.
So now it is time to plan for yet-another Sunday night Super Bowl party, another debauched outing where everyone tries to pretend that they’re not going to call out from work on Monday morning.
These Super Bowl celebrations, however, find their origins not in first game played between the Packers and Chiefs in 1967, but in ancient Rome, with an emphasis on Roman hedonism and unchecked decadence. And it just so happens that we currently have our own Nero in Washington, playing his figurative fiddle as democracy burns.
So let’s examine this premise.
For starters—and those of you who don’t want to be bummed out by the science, stop reading here—football itself is not entirely different from the gladiator fights in the Roman Colosseum.
We know now, without any empirical doubt, that the game of tackle football exponentially increases the odds of the players eventually succumbing to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). This is no longer conjecture. Researchers at Boston University found that 91.7% of former NFL players were diagnosed, postmortem, with CTE.
However, while the combatants in the gladiator battles had no choice to compete, these NFL players know the risk and willfully participate. Still, we are watching these men, these tremendous specimens of human speed, strength and agility, collide and essentially kill each other in slow motion, while we cheer.
Then there is the fact that many of us will also stuff ourselves with as much food and drink as our bodies can consume—usually the most decadent and delicious and artery-clogging feasts we can conjure—while watching the game.
I’m not absolved here. In a text thread with my wife and stepdaughter while planning our Super Bowl menu, this exact phrase was used: “Is it even possible to have too much food during the Super Bowl?”
While the concept of the vomitoriums was largely an urban legend, the Romans, especially the aristocracy, were not afraid to indulge in lavish, Bacchanalian festivals involving excesses of all sorts.
Of course, the Romans would also engage in orgies, and if that’s your thing at a Super Bowl party, I have no hate. As long as everyone is of legal age and consenting.
Listen, I’m not being sanctimonious here. I will also be watching the game, eating until I’m stuffed, sipping Bud Lights, watching Bad Bunny at halftime and praying that Sam Dannold soils himself and the Pats can secure a seventh Lombardi Trophy.
Now, should I touch on the number of Super Bowl squares I’ve purchased or the bets I’ve already placed on DraftKings? The Romans, it seems, also liked to wager at The Colosseum…
You can reach Nathan Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com