The Cardboard Cutout Super Bowl

The 2021 Super Bowl ratings, like the 2020 election results, were delayed. When they finally came out, they reflected the continuing decline of the Super Bowl as a media event. According to the New York Post,

CBS announced on Tuesday morning that 96.4 million viewers watched the game across all their platforms, “including the CBS Television Network, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties, Buccaneers and Chiefs mobile properties, Verizon Media mobile properties and ESPN Deportes television and digital properties.”

. . . Last season’s Super Bowl, a Chiefs victory over the 49ers on Fox, averaged 102.1 million viewers across all platforms.

Some in the elite, who apparently weren't paying close attention, complained that the fans in the stadium were clearly not social distancing. Even though the ones in the stadium could be excused, since they were cardboard cutouts, it does strike me as a valid point -- if corporate policies require employees attending Zoom meetings from home to wear masks on the call just to set an example, why can't the cardboard cutouts do the same?

Nevertheless, it was clearly a national scandal that the flesh-and-blood fans watching in the Tampa bars were in fact neither socially distanced nor wearing single masks, let alone two.

So much for the mayor’s order requiring masks at Super Bowl parties. Videos went viral on social media, showing throngs of mostly maskless fans and packed sports bars as the clock inside Raymond James Stadium ticked down on a hometown Super Bowl win for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But it's also worth noting that past Super Bowls featured notable ads like the Apple 1984 and a halftime show with a wardrobe malfunction. The most notable event this year was the Jeep ad featruring a 71-year-old Bruce Springsteen calling for unity, which became a near universal laughingdtock.

Now, if you have never been receptive to Springsteen’s patented brand of rock’n’roll transcendence, or if you are skeptical of the working-class fixations that helped turn him into one of the most famous musicians on Earth, then this commercial will not convince you otherwise. In fact, this might be how you have always seen him: Here he is preaching a vague message of unity while standing far removed from any actual human beings. He is speaking to a promised land that maybe never actually existed. He looks impossibly well-maintained even though he wants you to think he’s weathered and worn from years of manual labor. He is selling you a car.

The style of sports-media hype that was once the Super Bowl is gradually but perceptibly losing its apppeal. At least the Jeep commercial didn't have Bob Dylan.