the Super Bowl is BIG but i don't know why

I can’t stop thinking about life and its reason or purpose lately. This thought of mine stemmed from watching a football game a few months ago. I can’t remember what teams were playing or exactly when, but I was watching an NFL game on TV when this it popped on my radar. It suddenly seemed crazy to me that so many humans care to watch other humans play a game. How is this so important and how is this such a big business/market and how do these players make so much freaking money? No I don’t live under a rock, I can answer these questions literally. But when you really think about it, why does all of this matter? And the Super Bowl is the holy grail of football games, obviously. But why? How is a game such a big deal? This string of questions is the root of me questioning my existence. Thanks, football.

Let’s dig in a little bit. Tell me, Google, give me answers! (Search engines make my life too easy. I should pick up a physical book soon.)

The first pro-football game was in 1892, for which player William “Pudge” Heffelfinger received $500 for playing. Today, that amount would be around $13,000. That’s really nothing today, especially considering that some professional American football players earn more than $20 million a game. What?! But my boyfriend, who I consider a living sports encyclopedia, just told me that comparing these two figures is like “comparing apples to oranges [because] nowadays [players] would get paid more because of exposure. More people come to watch the games, people buy uniforms. Stuff like that never happened in 1896 so the players didn’t bring in as much money so they wouldn’t be paid as much.” Makes total sense and seems totally obvious now. Why didn’t I think of that this way?

His excited response to my comparison makes me ask why and how did all of this exposure come to be? Why do people care so much about football? Answering how the Super Bowl became as popular as it is today will hopefully fill in some blanks.

After reading one source that seemed promising, I found that the writer didn’t provide any concrete reason or evidence explaining how or why the game’s popularity is what it is today. He references the commercials and partying that take place and attract viewers and fans. But that’s not telling me how or why!

After further research, I found that I and the Times blogger weren’t the only ones who asked this question and found little concrete explanation. A big part of why the Super Bowl is as big as it is is because it’s just big and continues to get bigger. From the beginning, the Super Bowl advertised itself as big and important to watch, so people did. I did find, after asking Google in different ways, some tangible reasons for the game’s popularity.

NBCSports writer Joe Posnanski asked my same question and broke down five events that aided in making the Super Bowl larger than life, or as he put it, “crazy and over the top, and that’s the point.” Summaries of a couple of his reasons are below:

1. The third annual world championship game (not yet called the Super Bowl) was in 1969. Competition was high between the two leagues since the Green Bay Packers from the NFL won the first two championship games. New York Jets Quarterback Joe Nameth guaranteed the public that the AFL team would beat its opponent that year. After the AFL team won, people started paying more attention to football. Football couldn’t offer any history or tradition, unlike older American sports, so it made sure to give people something to talk about.

2. In 1978, Commissioner Pete Rozelle moved the game to 6pm Eastern Time. Previously, he moved the game to mid-afternoon so that East Coast reporters would have time to write about the game in the next day’s newspapers. To have the second half of the game in prime time television to get more viewers, but still give reporters time to talk about the game the next day, Rozelle changed the official kick off time to 6:17pm that year.

Posnanski’s 3, 4 and 5 are all events or commercials that happened during different Super Bowls and can be read about here.

Since its start, the Super Bowl has made noise, and I think the first two events above show that. The Super Bowl, I’ve now realized, is so big because it made sure it got that big. American football called itself king and everyone in America shook their heads, agreed and followed their ruler. That really, I’ve found, is the best way to explain it.