Super Sunday Meets Super Tuesday

Super Sunday Meets Super Tuesday


Packer DT Corey Williams after the loss

I'm still in mourning over Sunday night's game, and only now recovering enough to write. Eli Manning and the Giants just played a better game -- an exciting game, actually, if you didn't have a birthright emotional investment in who won -- and congrats to them. I think the hand of Vince Lombardi himself reached down from football heaven to bat those first two Giant field goal tries away, but the third time he said "you %$#@! SOB's don't deserve to win."

But my five year old appears to have learned the lesson of sticking with your team through good and bad. I was on Wisconsin soil for the game, visiting my parents for a caucus-delayed Christmas trip. Before the game Sunday my little guy had to have a Brett Favre shirt to match daddy and big brother. So we raced through the malls, and at the fourth store I found the last one in a kid size, so precious that it was locked up with a long bike chain, and I paid way too much. Roughly 80% of the mall population was wearing green and gold, and close to 25% were in Number 4 jerseys. (At the grocery store, every bagger and checker was in a Packer jersey, except for one brave soul in a Tom Brady shirt.)

And even after the loss, he's insisting on sleeping in it and wearing it to school. The Deeth family Packer loyalty moves on to the fourth generation.

So. That Onion article, Brett Favre Demands Trade to 1996 Packers ("The Packers would be willing to consider a trade package including a first-round draft pick and the 1996 Brett Favre"), turned out more accurate than I had dreamed. Third best in the NFL, best season in a decade... but damn, when they get that close it hurts.

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Way back last May, I noticed that the Super Tuesday primaries are only two days after Super Sunday. Now we know the matchup: both teams are from states with 1) primaries on Feb. 5 and 2) candidates still in the race, as Mitt's Patriots meet Hillary and Rudy's Giants. So that's Massachusetts and New York, and add to that New Jersey, where the Giants actually play, and Connecticut, since the team's nickname is New England. And the game itself is in John McCain's Arizona, which also votes Feb. 5.

Now, a shameless cut and paste, mildly updated crib of my analysis from last May.

Real People who do not live, sleep, eat and breathe politics will be distracted, particularly in the five primary states affected most by the game. Sunday nights are a great time to catch people at home, but in this case, the whole critical two-days-out evening is shot for campaigning and phone banking. Will some campaign, in crunch-time isolation from the real world, be dumb and call into Boston?

NFL audiences normally lean somewhat Republican -- not as much as NASCAR, says demographics firm Scarborough Research, but noticeably. The classic communication study "Super Bowl: Mythic Spectacle" by Michael Real touches on all sorts of psychology -- use of force, coaching authoritarianism, military metaphor, women as spectators and not as participants, and social Darwinism. These usual partisan and gender leanings are muted somewhat by the sheer size of the Super Bowl audience, as non-fans watch their one game of the year at parties or just "for the ads."

Speaking of ads, with a de facto national primary, would the millions for a Super Bowl ad be worth it? Washington Post:

At least two of the 2008 presidential contenders, seeking bang for their buck, have privately discussed bypassing a barrage of targeted local ads in favor of buying a spot with potentially more impact to run during the Feb. 3 Super Bowl broadcast, at a cost of about $2.7 million.

The first rule they teach you when you campaign in Iowa is don't door-knock during the Hawkeye game, and a political ad could be seen as an unwanted intrusion. (Other than their pre-pregame political special, how much will Fox editorialize during the broadcast?) Jim Nussle ran ads during the Hawkeyes in `06, to a huge statewide audience and to no avail. To get past that "I'm in my leisure time" barrier, a Super Bowl political spot would have to be fun and creative to the gold standard level of most Super Bowl ads: cultural catch phrase, wardrobe malfunction water cooler memorable.

The game itself will be a one-narrative story of the 18-0 Patriots. A Packer win would have meant a killer story of Favre's resurgence vs. the Patriots bid for the historic undefeated season. They were already predicting biggest. ratings. ever. for the game. Now the media will have to settle for Underdog Giants and Peyton's Little Brother as the (very) secondary narrative.

My Packers may have lost... but at least Barack Obama won't be distracted by another Bears Super Bowl appearance.