Rant #2,077: It's Over

Finally ...

The Super Bowl is over and done with.

I did not watch one millisecond of the game, and I didn't even know who won until about a minute ago, when I turned on my computer, and was bombarded with Super Bowl stories right on Yahoo.

Yesterday, my wife and I did the usual stuff we normally do on a Sunday.

It was not a "holiday" in my household.

I took my son to work, I went with my wife clothes shopping for both her and our son, I came home and watched a sport that I am more interested in than football--basketball--and I watched the New York Knicks lose once again, on one of the most bizarre referee decisions ever.

After the refs made a mistake--only granting a player on the Atlanta Hawks two free throws when he should have had three, for being fouled while attempting a three-point attempt--the Knicks scored themselves, but the play was negated when the refs literally rewound the game, back to the time when they made the mistake.

The Hawks player took his extra free throw, made it, and play resumed, as if the Knicks play never happened.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous calls ever, but according to the NBA rulebook, it is an actual rule, one that is never used, and one which I first witnessed being put in place during yesterday's game.

Then, another bizarre play happened, when an inbounds pass was grabbed by a Knick, but he was on the out of bound lines when he snared the pass.

Never happens, but it happened yesterday.

Of course, with the Super Bowl taking prominence, you will probably never hear of these things, unless you are in New York, Atlanta, or are an avid NBA fan.

Nobody cares about anything on Super Bowl Sunday except the Super Bowl.

I noticed that there were plenty of policemen out in force yesterday, even early in the day, making sure that people weren't partying too hard.

When we did the clothes shopping, there literally were few people in the store--the prior week, stores were packed, with people doing such shopping then rather than on Super Bowl Sunday.

Later in the day--which I spent after the Knick game watching an early 1950s exploitation film about wayward women, the less said about it, the better--I went out to the local eateries to get my family dinner, and while pizza places were doing a brisk business, the places I went to--Taco Bell and the local Greek restaurant for my wife--were as dead as could be.

Yes, the world seemingly stops for Super Bowl Sunday, but my family plugs on.

After we ate dinner, my wife and I watched another horrible movie--all you need to know is that Jessica Alba, one of the worst actresses ever to grace the screen, was in this movie, which was so bad that I don't even remember the title--and it served us well even though it was so bad, killing a good 100 minutes of time while making absolutely no sense at all.

As the evening pushed on, we both decided we had had enough, and we went to sleep.

I guess I still had my own version of "Super Bowl Fever," because I had trouble getting to sleep, and ended up going into the living room of our house, finally dozing off on the recliner we have.

I then went back into the bedroom, and fell asleep until my usual wakeup time, and here I am right now, at my usual perch in front of the computer typing this thing out as it nears 4:30 a.m. in the morning, having already eaten breakfast.

Look, I know, football is America's national obsession, but honestly, I don't buy into it, in particular at Super Bowl time.

I just have no interest at all, nor does anyone else in my immediate family.

The NBA is my game during the winter, and yes, I live--and mostly die--with the Knicks, a team that has had a black cloud over it since 1973, the last time the team won the NBA championship.

But now that the Super Bowl is over, the sports pages--after a couple of days of over-analysis of what happened during the NFL championship game--will turn to our national pastime, and to me the world will be whole again.

Pitchers and catchers for all MLB teams will be reporting to Florida and Arizona in the coming days, and once baseball begins, you just can almost feel the summer coming, right in the middle of February.

Those 162 games in 180 days is what I look forward to, and while the NBA still has a couple of months to go in its regular season, baseball will be top of mind from mid-February until early November, when the World Series ends.

Football? What's that?

Tomorrow, I have some personal business to take care of, so I won't be around at the blog, so I will next speak to you again on Wednesday.

By then, your football fever will hopefully have subsided. Take two aspirin and meet me at the mid-week point.