Settle Down, settle down, I’m not talking to you I’m talking to myself. It is Super Bowl weekend. Excitement seems to be brewing like a witch’s cauldron filled with eye of newt. It’s too bad we can’t have this kind of excitement about other things.
Sustainable stuff is all the rage. You hear it all the time: sustainable water source, sustainable food source, sustainable energy
source and just about every thing else. What if we could have sustainable excitement?
Maybe that’s too much to ask for. Probably the closest thing to prolonged excitement in our lives is the excitement over Santa Claus and Christmas presents. Excitement seems to run for a month and then finally Christmas day and when that little nap hits you Christmas afternoon the excitement fades.
The Super Bowl this year is in full tilt boogey mode. Back-stories of special athletes, celebrity fans and crazed gamblers are pushing the excitement level. All this and it is just a football game.
The two best football games I ever saw were in person. I didn’t have anything to do with them I was just a spectator. They were both high school games. The first game was a last second nail biter. The team I was pulling for was pinned back at their goal line. It was fourth down and they had to punt. It looked like it was going be the opposing team getting the ball back and being able to score and win before time ran out. The home team hiked the ball to the punter in the end zone and the punter ran around in the end zone and almost ran the clock out. The punter stepped out of the back of the end zone and a safety was called.
With only five seconds left on the clock the home team had a free kick and the game ended with a victory. It was an incredible play and exciting finish to a game.
The other game was another last second finish with the visiting team scoring a touchdown to tie the game and then they were unable to score the extra point. It was a wild finish to a game that ended in a tie. It was exciting but it wasn’t a satisfactory ending to the game. The spectators walked off the field. One coach was berating his team for their failure to stop the last minute scoring and the other team’s coach trying to praise his team for almost winning the game but pointing out all the errors they made on the last play. It was an exciting few minutes though.
In all these football games I’ve seen and attended it’s too bad that the excitement didn’t last very long. Both of those games were talked about for a week and then it was on the something else.
Excitement is hard to sustain. Maybe the longest sustained game excitement was by Bill Walton the basketball great. When the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, Bill said he realized he was wearing Rick Carlyle’s shirt on Tuesday morning after the Sunday game.
I’m sure there will be an exciting game today. It is the Super Bowl.
Pizza, wings, beer and some wagers will make for a fun day. It’s just too bad we can’t keep up this kind of excitement in our daily lives. Wouldn’t it be something if you could be anywhere close to being this excited going to work on Monday? No way. That will never work.
