Why the superbowl matters

The Super Bowl is about the underdog.

The third Super Bowl pitted Broadway Joe Namath and his lowly New York Jets, an 18-point underdog, against legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas and the mighty Baltimore Colts. It was the stern, crew-cut Unitas against the shaggy-haired, bar-hopping Namath with his rifle arm and bum knees. The Jets won 16-7 and afterward in the locker room Nameth shouted into a forest of microphones: "I hope all you sportswriters are eating your pencils now because we won!"

I watched this game in the bitter winter of 1969 with the extended Puerto Rican family I was living with in Brooklyn, all 20 of us fuelled by beer and rum, cheering lustily. I then took off on 40 years of expatriate vagabondage. I lost touch with American football. But, wherever I was - Malacca, Songkhla, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Abu Dhabi - I always watched the Super Bowl. I figured it was my patriotic duty as an American. Sure enough I'd always find an American bar open in the early hours of the morning and gather together with a motley crew in football jerseys and Viking helmets to watch America's game.

During the Nixon years the game could be a conservative outing, behemoths slowly grinding out yards in the mud, and half-time shows with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the warplanes of the Strategic Air Command flying overhead and 10,000 white doves released into the air. But in time the game became more fluid and featured Mick Jagger and a bare-breasted Janet Jackson. This year Madonna will strut her stuff.

Now the three-point 2012 underdogs are the New York Giants, who lost four games in a row in the regular season only to bounce back in the playoffs, beating the fearsome Green Bay Packers in freezing Arctic weather and going into overtime with the San Francisco 49ers whose brutal linemen sacked Giants quarterback Eli Manning five times.

There was a big brouhaha at the beginning of the season about whether Eli Manning was an "elite" quarterback like his brother Payton and Tom Brady, star of the New England Patriots, the pretty-boy owner of a US$20 million California beach mansion and husband of the most beautiful woman in the world, Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen.

But the two quarterbacks had met before, in the 2008 Super Bowl, when Brady and his Patriots had come off a perfect 16-0 regular season only to be beaten by Manning and his underdog Giants. Now everyone in New York is crowing that this will happen again.

Which brings me to my second point about the Super Bowl: location. I happen to be from the greatest city in the world, and this season I have watched the game at home in New York for the first time in 43 years. I've had the luxury to watch all the season's games with my Thai-American son-in-law and get to know all the Giants' players on TV: the indomitable Eli Manning, the crushing linemen Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre Paul (who are out to flatten Brady), the pile-driving running back Ahmad Bradshaw, the two fleet wide receivers, Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz (whose grandmother is Puerto Rican and who dances a mean salsa whenever he scores a touchdown).

Come tomorrow, a mob of young Thai people will descend upon our house, along with a trio of old doddering friends from my youth. My nephew John, perversely, is a Patriots fan. He and my son-in-law have been exchanging insults via text messages for weeks. Victory will be so sweet. My own message to John will read: "Now that we have reduced your hapless New England Patriots to hamburger meat and bone splinters, never dare raise your maggoty heads again."

The great culminating joy of the Super Bowl?

Bragging rights.

James Eckardt is a freelance writer and author and former Nation staffer.