Two days after the Super Bowl and I feel untouched by the event. I suspect I know who won the game (seeing lots of headlines about Tom Brady) but I never saw the score, don’t know about any great plays (if they happened), and don’t know if it was memorable or boring. Nothing about it took me away from personal concerns and activities, for example, working on a horror screenplay and re-developing the ability to juggle three balls (I was somewhat adept at it years ago, but unlike with biking, juggling does require practice if you want to be able to succeed).
I had time for many other activities by avoiding the Super Bowl, and all the stuff that came before it (predicting who would win, etc.) and after it (analyzing why one team won and the other lost). With the “found time” I read more, exercised more, interacted more with friends, and—weirdly—felt less stressed.
Looking ahead to spectator sporting events that I’m going to avoid, I found myself thinking about spring training, March Madness, the NBA playoffs, the hockey playoffs...and the Kentucky Derby. I’ve never been a big fan of horse racing although I can see the appeal: the horses are big and powerful, they move gracefully, there’s a number of races on the card, each one raising the question: Who will prevail?
While thinking about the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby, suddenly I wondered if racing should be included with the other spectator sports. For sure, there are spectators. And it’s definitely a sport (”the sport of kings”). What makes it different is that the protagonists aren’t people. Yes, jockeys, trainers, and owners get attention. But the horses are the stars. This is a significant fact: the spectators don’t fantasize about running fast like the horses. They don’t envy the victorious horses. Although a spectator may root for a particular horse, if that horses, the spectator will never say, “We’re number 1.” There will be very little in the way of postmortems. And there won’t be any social-psychological analysis of the horses. If the winning horse was juiced, the horse won’t be treated like a criminal. He’s just an animal.
In a real way, watching a horserace might have more in common with birdwatching than with watching the Super Bowl. If I’m a right about that, then—despite all the commercialization and (yes) cheating—it is a less destructive form of entertainment, and definitely one that’s less invasive than the spectator forms of baseball, basketball, football, hockey, prizefighting, and soccer.
I’m still not going to watch it.