Super Dilemma: Bitter or better?

Well, the Super Bowl is this weekend, so I guess I have to declare a side. One thing I love about the Super Bowl is that it’s the one game a year that you’re not allowed to be neutral on. In any other football game of the year, if you don’t have a vested interest in either team, be it negative or positive, you’re just a casual observer. Just a fan of the sport. Even in the college national championship game you can be excused for being impartial. The World Series goes on too long to support a team you don’t really care about, and the NBA and NHL finals…well, let’s just say people aren’t exactly drawing lines in the sand.

But during Super Bowl week, the second question out of everyone’s mouth is, “So, who are you rooting for?� It doesn’t matter if you’re an ex-player-fantasy-league-member-bet-placing football junkie, or a sixty year-old nun who doesn’t own a TV and thinks football involves goalies and corner kicks, you better know who you’re rooting for by 6 p.m. on Sunday. (Well, 5 pm for us CST'ers.)

Secondly, I’ve always been amused by these media members who act like the American public is disinterested in, unhappy with, or even insulted by the match-up of a certain Super Bowl or World Series. Skip Bayless wrote an indignant column on Page 2 about how lackluster this year’s Super Bowl is, and how bored he is to have to be there to report it. He claims that, “The problem here is that, for the first time, the Super Bowl features two underdogs, two Cinderellas, two teams that came from nowhere on destiny-kissed rolls.� Um, the Seahawks went 13-3, were the number 1 seed in the NFC, and they have the MVP on their team. What exactly makes them "Cinderella"?

Basically, if a championship match-up in any sport doesn’t feature a) the team that was the media’s darling all year long that everyone wanted to see complete the script that had been written for them, (Colts) b) the long-reigning champion of said sport that everyone wants to see defend its title, (Patriots) c) a loud-mouth idiot that everyone loves to hate (T.O.) or d) at least one team from a major media market, (New York, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia) then the American public, outside of the two participating cities, is supposedly up in arms over the excuse for a sporting event they’re being forced to watch.

How about this? These are the two teams that made it to the championship game, so there’s probably a damn good reason it happened. I’m sorry if this match-up isn’t “sexy� enough for you, but if that’s what you’re looking for, go write for fucking Us Weekly, not the World Wide Leader in Sports. Not to mention, where exactly do you get the idea that no one is interested in this Super Bowl? Except for the 2004 Red Sox, we haven’t had a team with a better story than this Steelers team in recent memory. The Bus is on the verge of retirement after a 15-2 season and a playoff loss to the long-reigning Patriots, and his teammates plead with him through tears to come back for one more year because they promise they’ll get him to the Super Bowl, in his hometown, no less? Then they have to win their last four games of the season in a row to make the playoffs as the sixth seed and proceed to beat the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seeds all on the road on three consecutive weekends? What more do you want them to do?

Which brings me back to my dilemma, as mentioned at the top. The Steelers’ story, as I just glossed, is quite a remarkable one and easy to admire and get behind. However, I am, as most of you know, a Bengals fan. As a Bengals fan, the Steelers are my sworn enemy. They’re also the team that knocked our franchise quarterback and messiah out of the playoffs on his second play from scrimmage and made him questionable for the start of next season. This fact alone, of course, is more than enough for the meathead, unthinking, unfeeling fans among us to wish nothing but harm upon them the rest of the way. I, on the other hand, have somehow retained this uncanny ability to be at once a sports fan and a rational thinker. (Unheard of, I know. You should look into it, though. It makes your life a lot easier to not have your day ruined by strangers who have never met you and don’t have your personal happiness on their agenda.) I’m pretty damn sure that von Oelhoffen did not intentionally blow out Carson’s knee, and that it had nothing to do with Pittsburgh’s game plan. It’s a game, people play hard, shit happens. Get over it.

Also, my obligatory hatred for the Steelers is really just now starting to brew, mostly because the Bengals sucked so bad for so long that it was never really much of a rivalry, and it’s going to be just now in the upcoming years that the all-out battles between these two teams are really going to heat up.

Finally, how can you not respect the run the Steelers have been on? Ever since they lost to the Bengals the first weekend of December, they have been on an absolute mission. Seven wins in a row, in convincing fashion, when they needed every single one of them. Consider this: If the Steelers win this Sunday, they will have beaten the numbers 1,2, and 3 seeds from the AFC, the number 2 seed from the NFC, (Week 14 against the Bears) and the number 1 seed from the NFC (against the Seahawks this Sunday) all within two months of each other. Unless there’s a post-Super Bowl exhibition game against the Pats, I don’t think they can do much more to prove they’re the champs.

There’s also the Bus. The fact that he’s an ND alum. And how fitting it would be to see him ride off into the sunset cradling the Lombardi trophy. There’s Ben. I want to see my fellow Redhawk do well. And there’s also AFC vs. NFC. Let’s face it. With the two conference fields coming into these NFL playoffs, it would be an absolute travesty if the AFC did not emerge victorious.

I think my brother said it best in an email last week: “It's about having a spine and picking a side. This country is about winning and having a competitive spirit. It's not about sitting idle on the sidelines with no care of who wins or loses. It has been said that the only thing worse than hate is indifference. To be indifferent about the biggest athletic event of the year would be a horrible reality.�

Well said, bro. That’s why I’m swallowing my pride and rooting for my mortal enemy this weekend. Honestly, they just goddamn deserve it. I’d like to think that at least some of them would do the same if the situation was reversed, but then again…they’re Pittsburgh fans. So, for this weekend, go Steelers. But as of Monday morning…it’s all blood.