A reminder to check out Mary Earle's blog at http://mary-marysmoments.blogspot.com/

          WOW!!! SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!!! SUPER BOWL 51!!!

          There was a time when that would have meant something to me. I would have arranged my whole day around the game. I would have thought of nothing else during church. Later on, when I was a pastor, Super Bowl Sunday would be the shortest sermon of the year. I had no concentration for the message. It was all directed to the Game. Back in the day, my team, the Cleveland Browns, was great. Playoffs every year. But they always faltered in the playoffs and thus never have made the Game. But, oh my, I still loved it!

          I well remember the first Super Bowl. It wasn’t called Super Bowl I. The Roman numerals started later. Actually, that first game was officially called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, although at the time the news people were calling it either the Ultimate Bowl or the Super Bowl. Before it was the Super Bowl it was the NFL Championship Game. But then in the early 1960s another league came into existence. The American Football League was born. All of us National Football League fans just considered AFL football to be sub-par. No one took them seriously. They were just an oddity. They didn’t even have a national TV contract, unlike the powerful NFL and their partnership with CBS.

          Then things changed. The AFL partnered with NBC and the war started. The AFL started to garner a national audience. The NFL had to do something in order to maintain their control. So, negotiations started and a deal was hammered out. The NFL and the AFL would merge. The first step was to hold an ultimate championship game after the two leagues had their own championship games. Three years of that and then the leagues would fully merge. As I recall, the original plan was to call it the Super Bowl until the merger was complete and then it would just go back to be called the NFL Championship Game. It was called a ‘bowl’ instead of a championship because the big college games of the time were called bowls. The Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and a few others. That first Super Bowl was played just two weeks after the college bowl games, so it just seemed right.

          The contestants for that first Super Bowl were the Green Bay Packers from the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs from the AFL and the game was played in Los Angeles. It was broadcast on both CBS and NBC. I remember watching the first half on one network and the second half on the other. For that first game, each player on the winning team received a $15,000 bonus, which was thought at the time to be huge. The Packers won, 35-10. Finally, just to show how little people thought of these transitional games, there were 30,000 empty seats.

          Of course, that changed pretty quick. Now it is almost like a national holiday. The big build up, all the sportscasters expounding like the experts they aren’t, all the hype about commercials and half time shows and who said what. It is kind of crazy. But I used to love it.

          However, during the build up to Super Bowl VI, the Dallas Cowboys star running back, Duane Thomas, was asked if this was his ultimate thrill playing in this, the ultimate football game. (They still hadn’t quite gotten rid of the ‘ultimate’ title.) Thomas’ reply shocked a lot of people, me included. "If it's the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?" How rude! But it stayed with me.

          One day I realized that I was trying to worship two G/gods. The one true God of the Bible and the great sports god. I was in church several times a week, but I had to admit that my favorite house of worship was a stadium. My two high holy times each year were the World Series and the Super Bowl. I was a preacher with divided loyalties. I had to do something.

          Overnight, pro football died to me. I haven’t watched a complete pro game since sometime in the 1990s. I am still a baseball fan, but not like I was. During this last season, I listened to maybe one game a week on the radio and watched exactly four games on TV, all during the playoffs. I wouldn’t have done that except that my Indians made a run. I find that if I get to involved then the sports god starts to interfere with the true God. Not everyone is like that, but for me, I have to stay focused.

          So, it is Super Bowl Sunday. But, "If it's the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?"