I can't be absolutely sure about this, but after watching the 2025 Super Bowl, for the first time I feel like I'm turning into a NFL fan -- even though I've watched every previous Super Bowl and never had that inclination.
It's hard for me to tell what made the difference this time.
Sure, it was an entertaining game, filled with surprises. I expected that the contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles would be close. When the score was 24-0 at halftime after Philadelphia held Kansas City scoreless, I realized a blowout was more likely.
Yet all through the game, Kansas City bottled up Philadelphia's star running back, Saquon Barkley, who only got 57 yards total. That didn't matter much, as the final score was 40-22 with Kansas City getting 16 points in the fourth quarter after the game had been effectively decided.
My best guess is that this Super Bowl allowed me to turn the page on my longstanding reluctance to be a big fan of professional sports.
I've always preferred the college game, whether it be football, basketball, or baseball -- aside from my time in high school when I was a huge San Francisco Giants fan back when Willy Mays, Juan Marichal, and Orlando Cepeda were on the team. (Yeah, I'm old.)
College sports just seemed purer to me, athletes playing for the joy of the game rather than for big bucks. Of course, it bothered me that college athletic departments raked in lots of money from those athletes.
So when the NIL (name, image, likeness) policy came into being, which allows college athletes to make money from their personal brand, that seemed like a good thing to me. However, NIL has blurred the line between college and professional sports, making it more difficult for me to view the college game as purer.
Also, this year I watched the NFL division championships along with the Super Bowl. This helped me see something that is obvious, yet wasn't readily apparent to me until now: NFL players are top college players, just some years older.
Meaning, for the first time I could put the "professional" part of the NFL game in the back of my mind and focus instead on how NFL players are the cream of the crop of college football that I've enjoyed so much over the years.
The age spread of NFL players is greater than in the college game, but otherwise watching an NFL game is roughly similar to watching an All-Star college football game. And I could see in today's Super Bowl that the players are just as emotional as college players, ecstatic when things are going well, despondent when they aren't.
There is, though, one thing I refuse to accept about the NFL: using roman numerals to denote Super Bowls. That seems incredibly outmoded. How many people can tell what year this Super Bowl was? (Answer: 2025)
Just about nobody, even if they somehow know that LIX means 59. Roman numerals made a bit of sense when there was just a few Super Bowls, but now it's time to simply call them by the year they were played.
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