It is a sport many New Zealanders find incomprehensible, played by athletes most of us would not recognise if we passed them in the street.
It features gaudy and ludicrously expensive entertainment and advertisements. Television is in complete control, to the extent special time-outs are called for the express purpose of making more money ($3 million per 30 seconds) from the commercials.
So why do I love the Super Bowl so much?Because it is what it is, I guess.
The most extraordinary single-day sporting event on the planet. The greatest show on turf. All those hyperbolic descriptions.
But for me, the Super Bowl is about being the one day a year when I really feel like an American.
When I know my soul brother in Texas and my friend in New Jersey and my cousin up in Canada and a few hundred million fans around the world are doing the same thing I'm doing.
• . . . and sport's greatest spectacle
So, as per tradition, a colleague and I have booked Monday off and will gather at his house for the big Packers-Steelers showdown.
Pizzas will be ordered, Budweiser (for him) and Dr Pepper (for me) will be consumed, we will stand for the Star Spangled Banner and we will jump out of our seats whenever a touchdown is scored.
We will hope for an exciting game, some drama, one or two eye-popping plays, that sort of thing.
But unlike, say, a Rugby World Cup knockout game involving the All Blacks, we will have little investment in the result, our day will not be ruined if the favourites lose, and we will not spend many subsequent days analysing what went right or wrong.
For all the glitz, the hype and the money, the Super Bowl - from this distance, at least - reminds us that sport can indeed be purely about fun.
• Odds and ends
But the Super Bowl also celebrates the weird things that can happen when sport and gambling get into bed together.
Among "prop" bets being offered by Vegas bookmakers.-
• Who wins the toss.
• How long Christina Aguilera's rendition of the national anthem takes.
• Who the MVP thanks first (the coach, family, God, team-mates, no-one).
• The colour of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach.
• Whether the total score will be an odd or an even number.
• More sports droughts
Some readers have been in touch to comment on our list of great sporting droughts (ODT, 1.2.11).
James Dignan suggests we spare a thought for football club Dumbarton, which plays in Scotland's third tier.
Dumbarton - "The Sons" - was formed in 1872. It won the Scottish Cup in 1883 and, 128 years later, it has not managed to win it again.
Professor Emeritus Brian Merrilees, from the French department at the University of Toronto, suggests ice hockey's Maple Leafs also deserve a mention.
The Toronto franchise has massive fan support but has not won the coveted Stanley Cup since 1967.
• The soul of football
Writer Eduardo Galeano, in Football in Sun and Shadow, said he was "a beggar for good football". Well, there aren't many beggars at the top table of English football.
The madness that unfolded on the final day of the transfer window earlier this week, when Liverpool and Chelsea combined to spend more than 100 million ($NZ210 million) on just four players, indicates "financial fair play" is just a pipe dream.
As a Liverpool fan, I am devastated my club has lost "El Nino" Torres, disappointed the Spanish striker did not show more class in his first comments as a Chelsea player, disgusted at fans burning shirts with Torres' name on the back, and bewildered at Liverpool's decision to make a 21-year-old ponytailed Newcastle wild child the seventh most expensive player in history.
Fine, football is a business. A big business.
You have to be cashed-up to succeed, and the principles of a free market mean player movement is going to be regular and occasionally excessive.
But I also want to believe football, and those who play and run it, has a soul.
It is hard to hang on to that hope sometimes.
• Orange-and-black memories
My recollection of playing for the Weston Pirates under-8 rugby team (last week's The Last Word) was mostly correct.
But the boy I remembered as Kelly Gillan in the accompanying photo was actually Rohan Gillan, Kelly's older brother.
The Gillans' mother, Sue, contacted me from Christchurch during the week with an update on my former Pirates team-mate.
Rohan, who moved to Christchurch with his family at intermediate age, went on to play age-group rugby for Canterbury and Canterbury Country, as well as representative softball.
He and Kelly, who played rugby for the Crusaders Colts and the New Zealand Youth team, are both married with two children and working as printers in Hornby.
• Our heroes
If the MY TEAM series wasn't enough, the Otago Daily Times sports department is planning another series and asking for some ideas from readers.
Local heroes will celebrate some of the great grassroots contributors in Otago sport.
We are looking for long-serving coaches, dedicated officials, respected administrators, stalwart players - and we want the unsung stars, those who have toiled away for years without recognition.
Our list already has a few names on it, but please let me know if you have any suggestions.
