Pressdog.com

Super Bowl Frothing Hype Festival

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 01/29/99)

Just for the record, we're nearing the end of the Week of Obligatory Frothing, better known by its original name, Super Bowl Week. You may think that Super Bowl Week has just seven days, like any standard week. But, it actually extends for no less than 26.8 days.

Thanks to massive corporate sponsorships, the Super Bowl™ has managed to extend every day of the last week in January by 2.3 hours so they can ram in still more coverage. In a watershed marketing event, a large, darkly dressed Worldwide Advertising Agency somewhere managed to slow the rotation of the Earth by simultaneously throwing their collective cellular phones at Northern Canada from a low-flying plane. The result? 2.3 extra hours of coverage each and every day.

Basically, there are 3,500 reporters swirling around Super Bowl™ host town Miami looking for some way to pad their expense accounts. I was a reporter for nine years and, although I didn't cover an actual Super Bowl™, I did once cover the Iowa state volleyball tournament, which is basically the Super Bowl™ with makeup, pony tails, lots of jumping up and down and high-pitched screaming.

During the two weeks before the Super Bowl™, the Media Horde swirls around in a giant clot, boom mikes and lights protruding above their angry mass like some kind of Mass Comm antenna. They go from player to player, asking the same questions over and over. If part of the Horde does happen to break off and talk to a different player, pretty soon members of the main horde will come over one at a time until the entire horde has migrated to the new player in a very amoebae-like fashion. They do this because we Media Types fear "MISSING THE STORY."

Trust me, reporters (and you know who you are) would much rather take a ball peen hammer to some body joint than MISS THE STORY. So, if Channel 6 has audio of some cornerback talking about why he didn't get braces as a child, BY GOD, you better have a "little item" on it for your paper or your editor will scowl at you. Papers choose editors based on their ability to scowl and to work many hours wearing the same clothes in return for a 1.08% pay raise every 18 months.

This year the BIG STORY was The Triangle of Hate, an alleged feud between Denver QB John Elway, Atlanta coach Dan Reeves and Denver coach Mike Shanahan. Then, just when The Media had run out of slugs to pump into that dead horse story, they got a break and the Super Bowl™ Trash Yap Off between Denver tight end Shannon Sharpe and Atlanta cornerback Ray Buchanan broke out. An actual exchange, as read on espn.com:

Sharpe: "Tell Ray to put the eyeliner, the lipstick and the high heels away. I'm not saying he's a cross-dresser; that's just what I heard."

Buchanan: "But Shannon looks like a horse. I'll tell you, that's an ugly dude. You can't tell me he doesn't look like Mr. Ed."

That, my former managing editor would say, is "juicy stuff." I'd be all over that like white on rice. Of course the main attraction of the Super Game for many, many media personnel is that they generally get in free. And, I've heard they have a lovely buffet in the press box. Everyone wants to deliver Total Coverage for their readers/viewers/listeners, so they all send 10 to 12 media personnel each. Once those reporters are all at the Super Bowl and fitted with their special passes, they then feel obligated to generate many stories during the week to justify their huge beverage and hotel bills. The result is a swirl of stories that quickly becomes Hurricane Hype.

Fortunately, we eventually do play some football, which seems almost like something to break up the pre-game, half-time and post-game shows. Many also watch the game just for the commercials. At something like $2 million a minute, you know you'll see the best ads America can produce. So get up early on Sunday and tune in the 21-hour-long pregame show. Watch replays of all the 32 previous Super Bowls, tape the ads and then gear up for a half time long enough to stage Handel's Messiah.

Oh yeah, and they might play some football in there somewhere, too.

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