What ever happened to plain old football?

I don’t like the Super Bowl anymore.

As a Saints fan, save for 2010, I never really have had reason to, but that’s not the point.

What I mean to say is that the Super Bowl has become the one Sunday of the NFL season where it’s not about football, and it’s getting worse every year.

Super Bowl XLVIII’s kickoff was set for 4:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, but we didn’t get any final pregame analyses from experts, our heartwarming stories of players buying underprivileged kids a ticket to the big game, or even a story about how excited the New York megalopolis was to be hosting the first-ever “cold weather” Super Bowl.

Instead, FOX showed us pointless hype videos for the teams we’ve already been hearing about for two weeks, an overproduced version of the Star Spangled Banner and—my personal favorite—a going-to-commercial teaser for, wait for it...the coin toss. Shameless, I know.

The Super Bowl is supposed to be the greatest football event of the year, but its broadcast isn’t even about football anymore. We’re too caught up in the pageantry to just sit down, have a beer and watch a football game.

I sifted through more articles after the game on the “controversial” Coca-Cola commercial and how short Bruno Mars is than I actually saw on the game, which, if you didn’t catch it, was a clinic by the Seattle defense.

It’s more sad this year because all the storylines—Pete Carroll having success in the NFL, Russell Wilson proving doubters wrong yet again, Richard Sherman showing class in victory for once—were buried by things that football fans claim not to care about. Does anyone even know anything about Super Bowl MVP Malcolm Smith? He’s a third-year player out of USC who had an interception in four of the Seahawks’ last five games, by the way.

I know that the Super Bowl has become as much a cultural event as New Year’s Eve or St. Patrick’s Day. I also know that not every American is a football fan.

But, first and foremost, it’s a football game.

It seems like we’ve forgotten that somewhere along the line.