Sorry, haters, but I enjoyed Super Bowl 53. To me, it was anything but a snooze-fest, and I’d say I was surprised that so many people saw it that way except I kept getting jolted with a reminder by almost every Super Bowl ad about what people want: Explosions and crashes and cliched one-liners. Shiny objects and loud noises.

All I heard on Monday was this: The Super Bowl sucked. It was boring. During the game, I saw the live memes, especially one of a blobby drawn figure poking the Rams’ and Patriots’ logos with a stick and saying, “Do something!”

Disclaimers: Know that I’m a pure football fan. Despite the obvious warts on the sport, I love it. I watch games until the bitter end, curious to see how players and coaches act and react in even the most hopeless situations. Also, I get that Patriot-hatred drove some of the game criticism, and, since the Eagles (or Saints) weren’t a choice, I was pulling for the Pats.

Now, what I watched was a supremely well-played and well-fought game that was undecided until the last few minutes. It was 13-3, but it wasn’t a game of bad calls, dropped passes, and poor judgment. It was a game that was taken over by those other 11 guys on the field, the defenses, players who in our shiny-object culture have been rule-strapped until they’re often relegated to being nothing more than high-paid turnstiles.

But these defenders, guided by great coaching, played at an incredible level. They made the greatest quarterback ever look average and a young gun look befuddled. This wasn’t a blunder-filled offensive performance. The Rams’ receivers didn’t drop two passes in the end zone–they had balls ripped from their arms in jaw-dropping moments of timing and athleticism.

It was a game where specialists, like the Ram punter, were having a tremendous impact on the game because everything mattered.

We thought this was boring?

What do we want? Just look at the Super Bowl ads (and the goofy, over-the-top halftime show) to see what’s needed to keep our attention nowadays.

It was all celebrity-this, shiny object-that. But I was particularly struck by the movie ads. They showed the cookie-cutter plots, cliched lines, and mindless explosions that rake in the bucks at the box office.

That is what we want. Loud noises. Governing by Tweet. Bombast. We want shows featuring camera close-ups on amazed celebrity judges (they’re actors who are trained to fake things–it’s what they do!). We want movies in which the hero says, “Let’s do this!” and the villain punches people so hard they fly across the room and helicopters crash into buildings and/or giant monsters.

We want explosions and more explosions. In slow motion. In high def.

We want video games that you can reset when things don’t go your way and video clips that last three seconds.

How does Super Bowl 53 stand a chance?

Luckily, even at parties, you could cure your boredom by turning to your little device, checking for funny memes, texting, and maybe even getting in a round of Candy Crush.

If you were still bored, you knew you were in luck: Another Fast and Furious movie is coming your way. You’ll get to see plenty of long bombs yet.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 1 Comment »