Things I Hate About the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl has become an annual reminder that we, indeed, are a Christian nation.

Growing up Roman Catholic, I recall the calendar year seeming very much like a NFL season. There's a congregation of like-minded individuals every weekend, joining to celebrate or repent inside of a well-financed structure with ample parking, but limited restroom facilities. There are ritualistic chants and songs; all of us watching men in uniform following a time-honored game plan for a predetermined time limit.

Along the way, you have your highlights (Easter Sunday is the churchly equivalent of having Patriots/Colts in Week 5) and your lowlights (The Feast of the Assumption has all the glamour of Cardinals/Browns), but you never lose sight of the fact that you're building to something spectacular — a massive, global, and historic event at the end of the "season" that families gather for and traditions are build around.

Christmas. Or, in the NFL's case, the Super Bowl.

Parties are held. Feasts are prepared and consumed. Frequently, money changes hands between friends or siblings. For one day, we all come together to celebrate the same awe-inspiring event ... well, except for the Jews and Muslims in one case and bitter Patriots and Saints fans in the other. For one day, every single corporation in America attempts to find a way to use the emotions tied to an annual holiday to push product, whether it's through head-pounding commercial announcements or sponsoring garish parties; though one stark difference between Christmas and the Super Bowl is that Penthouse doesn't have a martini mixer in Nazareth with an ice sculpture of the Baby Jesus every Dec. 25.

Just like Christmas, the Super Bowl is a joyous time, but one with an undeniable amount of annoyances, nuisances and traditions I wish would die a rapid death.

Witness:

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE SUPER BOWL

Getting "5 and 5" in the Office Pool — I was charged with running my office's Super Bowl pool this year, and what an absolute pain it was. I felt like that soccer mom who has to pimp her daughter's awful school fundraiser. ("Oh, there are all kinds of neat stuff! A $30 bag of white chocolate-covered ham, or this $50 pizza-making set that will stay unopened in your pantry until the apocalypse...")

It was $5 a square, but you'd think from the reactions I got that it was $5 million — my mistake for going around and asking the day before payday. If I get stuck doing this again next year, I'm going to completely revamp my approach: I'm going to walk around with a seeing-eye dog and a sign that indicates I'm a Vietnam vet who needs a kidney transplant. I see those guys making a mint on the highway median every day.

Worst of all, my girlfriend got stuck with the worst numbers in the box: "5 for the Colts, 5 for the Bears." Since 1967, the number 5 has only appeared four times as the second digit of a final score, and never has a game ended with both teams having "5 and 5." It's a nearly impossible scenario to meet that standard — a confluence of botched extra points, safeties or an inordinate amount of field goals or touchdowns without field goals — so I guess she'll have to be content watching me smile with glee at having "4 and 4" and "Bears 3 and Colts 7." It's good to be the king...

Party Store Decorations For the Super Bowl — Save your money, unless you're buying an Andy Reid piñata. No one cares about hideous green banners that spell out "The Big Game" or cheap paper plates that have a cheerleader and goal-post on them (unless the cheerleader is riding ... oh, never mind). And if you're dumb enough to buy officially-licensed party favors, then you're probably too dumb to even cook a meal. Speaking of which...

Awful Super Bowl Party Food — Look, we all enjoy a nice ziti or bowl of chili or a pizza from the place on the corner. But who are these people (Seinfeld, 1991) that bring a giant CorningWare dish with "26-layer taco bean dip?" You know, that mess of guacamole and salsa that looks like it was just mined from Horatio Sanz's colon?

Stick with the standards; no one wants to be on a s—t break when Grossman throws his fifth INT.

The MVP Award — First of all, the recent list of winners reminds me of both the Best Supporting Actress category in the Academy Awards and the Best New Artist at the Grammys. For every John Elway, there's a Dexter Jackson. For every Tom Brady, there's a Desmond Howard. Too many Mira Sorvinos and Milli Vanilis, not enough Cate Blanchetts and Mariah Careys.

Worse yet, the NFL changed the voting rules in 2001 to where online fan voting accounts for 20% of the MVP ballot (the media makes up the rest). Great idea: let's leave one of the game's greatest honors in the hands of a bunch of guys who've been pounding pints since noon. And by that, I mean the journalists...

Homeland Security Kills Tailgating — To be fair, the parking lot at Dolphins Stadium has a police blotter that reads like a quiet night in Compton. But Homeland Security's decision to outlaw traditional tailgating — lawn chairs, grills, etc. — is the kind of overprotection that I thought was exclusive to roughing the passer penalties. Remember when this was a fan experience instead of yet another police state in our post-9/11 nation?

Super Bowl in a Vacuum — No. 78 in my book "Glow Pucks & 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" is "Warm-Weather Super Bowls," the NFL's rule that requires a minimum temperature in February of 50 degrees or a domed stadium in order for a city to host the big game. This, of course, is a big middle finger to some of the most dedicated fans in the league (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New England, and Green Bay, to name a few). Kansas City was awarded the Super Bowl in 2015, but that's now up in the air after voters rejected a tax increase to put a retractable dome on one of the NFL's most electric open-air experiences.

As I said in the book, the biggest joke of the NFL postseason is that the games that determine the Super Bowl matchup can be played in blizzards, but the Bowl itself cannot.

Okay, second biggest joke ... the first being Marty Schottenheimer.

"The Big Game" — Yes, I understand the need to protect a copyright and the value the NFL has built around its brand. But when you have radio DJs twisting their tongues around baby-talk like, "Your home for continuous coverage of the Big Game between that city in Illinois and that other team with the horseshoe logo somewhere in South Florida, perhaps at a beach," it's time to just accept that "Super Bowl" has become public domain.

The Pre-Pregame Show Entertainment — The pregame show before the official pregame activities should be a time for intense scrutiny of the game for the football fans in the audience. Yet I guarantee on CBS there will be some apathetic music acts and "journalist" Katie Couric offering some nonsensical human interest snorefest where there should be a discussion about the Bears' secondary.

Those Truly Bad Commercials — I'm not talking about the divisive ones that some people love and others loathe, like the singing and dancing Burger King commercial from last year. At least that had some ingenuity. I'm talking about the depression that sets in when you realize that tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man hours have been spent on an advertising campaign, and the offspring is stillborn (See: Pepsi can ad with Jay Mohr or last year's ESPN Mobile launch).

Bringing an Idiot to the Party — Finally, a category I'm sure we can all identify with: the unwelcome party guest. This is that bubble-headed blonde on your buddy's arm who doesn't know jack about the Super Bowl, football, how televisions work, party etiquette, and the myriad of inside jokes that fly between friends and family. This also means the walking lug nut that a female brings to the party; the guy who cracks ill-timed jokes and pretends to understand everything about the game because he was a JV backup nose tackle in high school and watched "Inside the NFL" at least twice this season. And this also means the curmudgeonly cynic who always drinks too much beer and hates every player, coach, commentator, and commercial with equal unsettling passion...

... oops. I think I just outed myself as an idiot.

Enjoy the "Big Game," folks...

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].