February 11, 2010
Lou Groza, NFL Hall of Fame kicker: "Old place-kickers never die, they just go on missing the point."
Hey, no they don't. In Super Bowl 2010, they were the stars.
Was it just me or did anyone else notice that Super Bowl 2010 was all about aging in some form or other? The game itself, halftime show, and events leading up to the game had an underlying theme: the old guy or gal still has it!
Here is what I mean.
Reason numer one. As the game starts, an inspirational story about aging unfolds. The oldest player ever to appear in football's greatest game scored the first points of the 2010 Super Bowl.
Indianapolis kicker Matt Stover, who was a man without a team as late as October, kicked a 38-yard field goal early in the game. He turned 42 on Jan. 27 making him the oldest player in Super Bowl history.
'It's been a ride, to say the least,'' Stover said during a telephone interview with reporters on his birthday. ''I had a vision from the beginning. I even told the management here that my goal was to kick them into the Super Bowl."
It was quite a feat for the 20-year-old veteran of a sport that regards age 42 as older than dirt.
Reason number two. Next out of the box, Betty White of Golden Girl fame and older than, well the hills, wins the day with the top-rated ad of the game, according to USA Today's Ad Meter.
That would be the Mars Snicker ad in which a guy plays like Betty White until he has a Snickers bar.
Ad Meter tracks the second-by-second responses of a panel of viewers to ads during the Super Bowl and ranks them best to worst. Betty White was terrific in the spot, I thought, and apparently so did millions of viewers.
Reason number three--"The Who" at halftime.
I was pretty excited when I heard that the Super Bowl halftime show would feature The Who, an English rock band from the 60s and of Woodstock legend and lore.
The only problem was that they worried me a bit during their performance.
I wondered if they would injure themselves as they swung their arms around in giant circles between chords. Rockers used to do this in the 60s, but these guys are older now. If I tried something like that these days I would be in physical therapy by tomorrow.
Nevertheless, The Who seemed just fine as they rocked out on their old hits. Granted, vocals perhaps a little weak, but the music still strong.
And finally, the reason I did not like the Super Bowl.
As much as I love Drew Brees and Peyton Manning, the quarterback I really wanted there on Super Bowl Sunday was Brett Favre.
Not so much for a team as for himself-- the retired, unretired, retired again, and unretired again standard bearer of defying age itself.
For some of us, he is our Super Bowl champion whether he made it there or not.
