A super phenomenon!

I have no dog in this fight.

The New England Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX on Sunday. With all the hoopla this week about the game, I’ve been thinking about all the different Super Bowls that have taken place over the years. In the words of the old ABC Wide World of Sports intro. I’ve been thinking about “the thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat.”

I naturally thought back to my first Super Bowl. I was six. I got to see the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Minnesota Vikings 16–6 in Super Bowl (IX) on January 12, 1975. My dad volunteered as a treasure for our local fire company. He would help count money from fundraisers and help write out checks and pay bills throughout the year. As a perk of his job, he took my brothers and I along with him to the empty fire station to watch the game on the station’s TV.

We’re talking the 1970s here. The fire station had put out some money for the TV. It had a huge mahogany exterior and was bigger and brighter than our crappy old TV at home. It was the biggest TV I had ever seen up to that point. It was so big that I felt like I was at the game. I was in heaven.

I can’t tell you much about the game. I remember stopping at every commercial break to throw my football in the air and play out the game. You won’t find my name in any of the old Super Bowl clips, but my dramatic catch of Terry Bradshaw’s throw and dive on the couch late in the fourth quarter sealed the game for the Steelers. In real life, Bradshaw threw the ball to Larry Brown. And yea, there’s no couch on the field either.

But I still helped.

Here’s a few of the things about the Super Bowl that amaze me:

–Eyes on the prize. The Super Bowl in 2025 set a new, all-time viewership record with an estimated 127 million viewers in the U.S. and more than 62 million international viewers. The game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs became the most-watched television program of all time in the U.S..The game was broadcast to over 195 countries and territories, with significant audiences in Canada, Mexico, Germany, Australia, and the UK. 

While big numbers, they still pale in comparison to the World Cup. The 2022 FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and France was watched by a record-breaking global audience of nearly 1.5 billion people, making it the most-watched sporting event in history. I can only imagine how many people will watch the World Cup this summer.

Let’s just say, a lot of people.

–Count your pennies. Tickets to the big game this year will cost you.

The cheapest resale seat starts around $6,000 to $8,000, while premium and club seats can exceed $20,000. (For the record, to cover the cost of the premium club seat, you’ll need two million pennies. Get counting. If you start now, you’ll hopefully finish in time for the game to start at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday.)

When the Green Bay Packers, coached by Vince Lombardi, defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in the First Super Bowl in January 1967, tickets cost just $12. In fact, the game failed to sell out. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was only two-thirds full.

I guess ticket scalpers and resellers, if there were any back then, lost out on that game!

–Picking up the tab. A 30-second Super Bowl commercial last year cost about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2024. I’m sure the price will be even higher this year. The do-gooder in me can’t help but think of all the different things that $8 million could buy. Here’s a few items:

• A quick search of Google shows that running a small, independent homeless shelter in a mid-sized city has operating expenses that often range from $14,000 to $25,000 per bed per year. A gift of a several million dollars would set the shelter up for a few years and then some.
• The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania announced recently that it received an $8 million gift to create a new curriculum, focusing on artificial intelligence and telemedicine. 
• State grants totaling more than 8 million can fund multiple local projects, such as bridge reconstructions, road repavings, and sidewalk improvements.
• An $8 million investment at a hospital can buy a shuttered, small-scale hospital facility, provide critical renovations for specific units, or act as emergency bailout funding to keep a facility operational.

Hmm, makes you think.

–Bet on it. I’ll be rooting on the Seattle Seahawks in this year’s game. I’m not much of a gambling man, but I can guarantee you several things are going to happen:

• MAGA folks have stated their complaints about the half-time show and will get even louder. Oh, I saw Bad Bunny’s Grammy Acceptance Speech, but outside of that . . . I couldn’t tell you one thing about him. I wouldn’t know one of his songs if I heard it on the elevator. But here’s what those folks don’t get: not everything in the world is about them. Bad Bunny has a huge international following. Guess who wants to go international? Yes, the NFL. Sorry Trumpsters. In the words of another well-liked musical group, “You can’t always get what you want.”
• Someone new will win. New England Patriots Quarterback Drake Maye just completed his rookie season and Seattle Seahawk QB Sam Darnold was selected 3rd overall in the 2018 NFL Draft by the New York Jets. Despite his high draft status, four different teams cast him off. They left him for dead before he found a home in Seattle.
• There will be plenty of jokes about the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles not being in the Super Bowl.
• We’re going to hear a ton about the upcoming Winter Olympics; The Traitors; All Her Fault; Law & Order: SVU; St. Denis Medical; and Happy’s Place. Get the connection. NBC is broadcasting Super Bowl LX with coverage also streaming live on Peacock. Look for NBC to advertise the heck out of its programs.

–Wide right. Someone will walk away a winner of the big game. One of the field goal kickers will kick the winning field goal or kick it wide right. They player’s names will be known by even the most casual fan. Case in point, the biggest nonsports fan may not give a hoot about a 4-3 or 3-4 defense, but they know who Tom Brady is.

So, yes, someone will walk away covered in confetti. And someone else will walk away as the loser. But I’m always reminded of something I learned as a kid. Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz summed it up best: “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”

• “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” –Maya Angelou 
• “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” –Michael Jordan
• “Everybody thinks a champion has to always be the winner, come out on top. But I think everybody inside is a champion themselves depending on how you handle your failures and your successes.” –Simone Biles
• “Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit.” –Bear Bryant

Go Team. Go! Fight! Win! Or something like that.