Is the Super Bowl overhyped?

Is the Super Bowl overhyped? The answer, to me at least, is plain and simple, no.

This is true for many reasons, but it’s most obviously seen the next year. They continue, they being the NFL, the networks that host it, the city that it is located in, the media, and the fans that continually go to these events, to make the event bigger and bigger. These faculties want to outdo each other on a year to year basis; so to say that this Super Bowl is more overhyped, especially compared to the one a year in the future doesn’t make sense.

But there are other reasons that are in play that affect the atmosphere and the playing of this singular game.

Super Bowl Sunday is a National Holiday the same way Halloween or St. Patrick’s Day is. There is no denying the fact that people, who have no interest or bearing on the game located thousands of miles from them pay attention or are at least aware of the spectacle of it. I saw the fact that some seven million people will call in sick to work the Monday following the Super Bowl. It impacts football fans, some beyond what should reasonably affect a grown man, and non-football fans alike. It creates a reason to gather, a reason to celebrate and Super Bowl Sunday is a holiday that should be, and rightly so, recognized.

And that brings me to my last point. The game of football has progressed so much in the last 20 years, that it has, to many sports fans, easily taken over as the most popular sport in America. The NFL is the American culture and the fans that follow are as faithful as any in all of sports. So pitting the two best teams in the most popular sports is going to be overblown, that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.

The Super Bowl is unlike any other sporting event. It is its own entity and holiday.  So to say it is over-hyped doesn’t sound like the truth; it’s big, it’s boisterous, it’s the Super Bowl.