Super Bowl XLI: Good story, no drama
Matthew Ralph

By all accounts, Super Bowl XLI had all the makings of a great story — two African-American head coaches and former co-workers facing off, an MVP quarterback trying to get over the hump, an Interstate highway rivalry and, to throw in a narrative that gives South Jersey natives a lot of pride, Gary Brackett.

But unfortunately, what unfolded on the large projected screen I was watching — and a day later learned was actually violating an arcane copyright law the NFL decided to start enforcing on certain megachurches in the midwest — was anything but dramatic.

To quote Howard Eskin, it was quite possibly the "most boring Super Bowl ever." Worse yet, a full 24 hours after it ended I remember so little of a game I watched every down of that I can't even give good reason why I was agreeing so much with a personality on Philadelphia sports talk radio. I was actually so bored with the talk about yesterday's Super Bowl that callers commenting about Eagles' coach Andy Reid's road-raging, heroin-using, gun-toting antics a week later was a welcome break in the Monday morning quarterback monotony.

Reading the sports section today didn't change that. Even the sportswriters seemed bored with the game. Giving the MVP of the Super Bowl to Peyton Manning, besides continuing in the Tom Brady tradition (minus of course a last second field goal by Vinatieri) seemed almost a pre-determined formality. Anyone actually watching the game knew that the two Mannings in Bears uniforms did just about as much to decide the outcome of the game as the guy on every other commercial these days who was waving his arms and making noise behind center all game.

It could be argued that running backs Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes, with their 264 yards of offense, 11 receptions and a touchdown combined deserved co-MVP honors. It could also be easily argued that Addai was more deserving of Rookie of the Year honors than a certain quarterback of a team that didn't make the postseason. Didn't Addai once play for a college team that had to share a national championship because of a popularity contest (aka the coach's poll)?

Regardless of all that, the game was a bust. And though it was the second largest crowd to ever watch the game according to estimates released Monday, giving the advertisers the eyeballs they were paying for, not even the commercials could make up for it. Why again do we make such a big deal out of people trying to cleverly sell us products to get us drunk, improve our flow, find a new job, drive through the mud and mail packages?

I asked myself that after I started, and then promptly stopped, ranking Super Bowl commercials on YouTube. I thought the ESL class commercial was pretty funny by the way. I could do without that Flomax commercial and the student contest-winner with all of the half-naked guys dancing in the streets.

All of that said, the story that did not disappoint in this year's Super Bowl was Mr. Brackett. He paced the Indianapolis defense with 8 tackles, six of them solo and made all of South Jersey proud. Just watching the 5-11 Brackett walk to midfield at Dolphin Stadium was a moment. This guy wasn't supposed to make it on a weak Rutgers team in the dark days of Scarlett Knights football, much less be in the huddle for the coin toss in the Super Bowl.

Sadly, Brackett's father, mother and brother were not there to see him top-off his already ready for Disney movie story. All three died over a 17-month period beginning with the death of his father in 2003.

Since I spend a lot of time at Glassboro High School covering education stories for the local paper, I couldn't help but have a vested interest in seeing him perform well on a national stage like that, even if the game was kind of lame. A fumble-causing hit like he had on Jerome Bettis in the playoffs last year that should have led to a game-winning touchdown and possible Super Bowl appearance would have made a much better A-1 story today.

Regardless, when Brackett makes his triumphal return later this month to a high school that was exploding with Royal blue and white fever when I visited it last week — "Brack's Pack" and "Brackett's Bunch" shirts proudly displayed — an otherwise forgettable Super Bowl will have a significant meaning after all.

posted [02.06.07]

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