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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The Super Bowl: The Good, the Bad, and the Hairy

By Bob Wire, 2-03-11

That's quite the pre-game ritual there, Rapunzel.

There will be trash talking, heads butting, spittle and blood flying through the air, and the meaty thump of huge bodies colliding with savage force on Sunday. And that’s just me making guacamole.

Yes, Barb and I are having a Super Bowl get-together, like we do every year. If one of our teams, the Patriots or Dolphins, is actually in the game, then the get-together becomes a party. Now, as the big game approaches, I’m concentrating on a few issues surrounding the whole shebang, and being a shirttail member of the mass media, I’m compelled to share them with you.

This year, lacking any fresh nightclub shootings or sexual battery revelations, the media frenzy seems to have focused on hair. Idea-starved reporters have filed hundreds of stories and videos about the beards worn by Steelers QB Ben “Ladies Man” Roethlisberger and his teammate, DE Brett “Yukon Cornelius” Keisel, whose furry facial shrubbery could be hiding a small family of raccoons, which may actually help the Steelers’ pass rush.

And then there’s the “who’s hair is prettier” angle pitting Troy Polamalu’s curly tresses against the flaxen mane sported by Packers human anvil Clay Matthews. Polamalu is a well-known pitchman for Head and Shoulders, while Matthews just inked a deal with Suave. Who cares? You know what kind of shampoo I use? It’s called 20% More Free.

This is all very entertaining, but it takes the spotlight off the biggest outrage of Super Bowl L-Minus-Five: no cheerleaders. That’s right, for the first time in the history of the Super Bowl, there will be no cheerleaders on the sidelines giving the viewers something else to watch on the big screen besides high-def, slow-motion close-ups of a botched exchange between the center and the quarterback. (Which, by the way, is oddly reminiscent of a wildebeest birth filmed on the Serengeti.) The Steelers haven’t had cheerleaders since 1970 (they were eaten by Mean Joe Greene), and the Packers, well, Green Bay, population 101,000, barely has enough people to work the chili dog stands at Lambeau Field, let alone support a squad of scantily-clad gyrators.

A good friend treated Shane Clouse and me to a Niners game at Candlestick Park in 2009, and I sat next to Shane’s brother-in-law on the twenty yard line. At one point the brother-in-law was hunched over in his seat, peering intently through a set of military-grade binoculars down at the field. He obviously wasn’t watching the play, which was happening at the other end. “I’m just trying to find where Shane and Kelly are sitting,” he said. I told him their seats probably weren’t between the two cheerleaders he was ogling. Besides, if those seats were available, we would have upgraded our tickets.

The point is, cheerleaders serve an important function at college and pro football games. This is the modern version of the Roman Christians vs Lions bacchanals, where thousands of people gathered in the Colosseum (they had to take a shuttle chariot from parking at the Pantheon; what a pain) to indulge their baser instincts and enjoy a raucous afternoon of mob rule. The modern version needs the cheerleaders to satisfy (if only mentally, later) the raging lust that goes hand in hand with our desire for controlled violence. When you take away the pom poms, we’re left with just the uncontrolled violence. In fact, why aren’t we airlifting hundreds of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders into downtown Cairo right now? Balance out the protesters’ rage and frustration with a little T ‘n A, and things might calm down enough to where the government will turn on their internet again.

And what do we have to distract us from this painful lack of glandular provocation? The Black Eyed Peas. After last year’s embarrassing appearance by those two old Muppets in the balcony, uh, I mean the Who, organizers decided that the “classic rock” trend of halftime entertainment had gotten a bit too classic. Well, they won’t get fooled again. This year the Peas, having reached their career crest with last year’s album, will be joined by Usher and rock-icon-for-hire Slash. It won’t matter. Give me Prince. Give me Springsteen. Give me Tom Petty. They put on a show worthy of the spectacle that is watched by a billion dipshits every year. Black Eyed Peas? I’d rather see the talking baby from the E-Trade commercials. I don’t care if the Peas are joined by Cee-Lo, Eminem and Kid Rock and Lady Ga-Ga swoops in on her leather bat wings and causes the entire USC Marching Band to have a simultaneous wardrobe malfunction. It’s going to suck.

When the Super Bowl TV producers threw up their hands in 1993 and said, “We’ve given them Up With People, what more could they possibly want?” and had Michael Jackson perform at halftime, they inadvertently ushered in a new era of rock concert-style halftime shows designed to keep viewers glued to the set, clenching their kidneys rather than going to the bathroom as a nation and—god forbid—missing a Doritos commercial. Of course, they squandered any newfound credibility by having a big fake-country-a-thon the following year with Clint Black and Travis Tritt.

But trends change. The Black Eyed Peas will surely go over the top with their costumes, lasers, video accompaniment on Cowboy Stadium’s aircraft carrier-sized scoreboard, and enough fireworks to make the initial invasion of Baghdad seem like a sparkler in the gutter. Let’s hope next year for a return to rock. Or, why not just go back to marching bands? Especially if they can do this.

There’s some good news in all the Super Bowl bombast, of course, and I’ve saved it for last. I don’t know why this isn’t trumpeted from the front page of papers across the country, but Papa John’s has announced that they will give a free pizza to every person in America if the Super Bowl goes into overtime, something that has never happened. I like pizza. I like it a lot. Like Jay Leno says, even if the pizza you’re eating ain’t that great, hey, it’s still pizza.

So I think the U.S. has a great opportunity here. We need to work together as a nation like we’ve never done before, to implore these two teams to synchronize their efforts and make sure that goddamn score is tied when the clock winds down at the end of the fourth quarter. Botch a punt. Drop a pass. Ice the kicker. I don’t care what it takes. If this thing goes into overtime, it will be pandemonium in the streets. There will be riots and looting, like Detroit just won the Series or something. Pittsburgh’s Flozell Adams, all six-foot-seven and 338 pounds of him wants it. Jerry Jones wants it. Pam Oliver wants it. The late, great Don Meredith wants it. I want it.

It’s in your hands, people. Send those tie-the-score vibes to the Steelers and Packers as hard and as often as you can. (Aim them at Dallas-area strip clubs if you want to get several teammates at once.) Enjoy the game, enjoy your friends, and Papa John’s, make mine a Meat Lover’s Special.

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