Of all the things the NFL purports to care about, perhaps the most ridiculous is its top-secret-type protection of the term “Super Bowl.”
After all, pro football’s championship game has long been titled the Super Bowl, held on Super Bowl Sunday and watched at millions of Super Bowl parties worldwide.
So what’s the harm in calling the game by its official name? Evidently, there’s quite a bit, according to the NFL. So much so that if you invite me to your Super Bowl party, and leave a flier on my door that contains the words “Super Bowl,” you will get a cease-and-desist order from the NFL if the league gets a hold of the pamphlet.
The NFL doesn’t want schmoes like you and me promoting their game. Their “concern” is that partygoers and party holders who use the term “Super Bowl” might confuse the event as something officially league-sponsored, thus constituting a violation of the league’s intellectual, branding and naming rights.
It’s easy to see how such confusion might arise. I mean, if I invited you to my Christmas party, there’s a pretty good chance you’d naturally assume I was an official representative of Jesus Christ, right? It all makes so much sense now.
This has been the NFL’s way for so many years now that it’s pretty much an afterthought, but I can’t help be slightly amused – and annoyed -- each year when the Super Bowl rolls around at just how much effort some business and people take to avoid the name. Sports books call it the “Pro Football Championship” on parlay cards and parties are given titles like the “Big Game Bash” and “Ultimate Football Party.”
I’ve witnessed the NFL’s paranoia firsthand. It was about seven or eight years ago when the league decided to unleash the Super Bowl cops on all of humanity. I was working for a gaming magazine that deadlined right before the game, and nearly every casino advertiser had to either adjust or remove their ad at the last second because all of them used “Super Bowl” in their party advertisements, and they all received the same letter telling them the SB term was not be used for their purposes.
But, seeing as I am not hosting any football parties this weekend, I reckon the NFL has no ownership of my Super Bowl rights. So, after years of quietly accepting this absurdity, and on behalf of football celebrators everywhere who have diligently avoided uttering the fatal words to describe their get-together, I’d like to offer the following heartfelt sentiment:
SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL, SUPER BOWL.
There, that feels better. One mention for each of the 45 Super Bowls that have been, or will be played when you include Sunday’s Super Bowl XLV between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
This Sunday, I intend to watch the Super Bowl, gamble on the Super Bowl and talk about the Super Bowl on Monday with my friends and co-workers. I’ll just hope none of them recently took a job working undercover for the NFL, or I could be in serious trouble.
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