The Super Bowl

The Super Bowl. The first things that come to mind when I think of this cultural phenomenon are greasy food, beer, commercials, lots of yelling, and above all, a great game of football. While I wouldn’t even begin to describe myself as a fan of professional football (I tend to prefer college football, but even then I wouldn’t consider myself a connoisseur), as an American I have been raised to appreciate the importance of Super Bowl Sunday.

So, it was quite interesting to experience (or not experience) Super Bowl Sunday from inside my Parisian apartment. Honestly, I hadn’t really realized it was Super Bowl Sunday until about 11pm when I checked my Facebook before going to bed and saw a flood of status updates about the game. “Oh yeah!” I wandered to my living room at midnight when the game started here and saw my roommates, J-C and François, attempting to sing along to the National Anthem. (Let’s just put it this way, they begin the song by singing “How far can you see?”).

François was wearing his Reggie Bush jersey (I hope it’s obvious why all French people watching the bowl rooted for the Saints) with his trendy pajama pants. When the game started he started eating his Super Bowl snack: Toast pieces with Nutella. The cultural warp caught me so off guard that I had to take a picture.

Now, I only watched the first quarter before going to bed (it was 1am by this time), but I did take note of the subjects that the French sportscasters talked about during the game. One of the sportscasters had played in the NFL, and the other one kept asking him questions like “There are so many players on each team. Does it bother them that they don’t all get to touch the ballon (football)?” or “What’s the Heisman trophy?”

Fantastic.