Watching the jocks

The true meaning of the Super Bowl was revealed to me at the Spandau Shopping Arcade last week.

It's pretty hard, regardless of where you are in the world, to get away from the marketing superfluousness and insult to athleticism that is the Super Bowl, or in other words, the final match of the National Football League season in America. While fortunately this year I'm no longer working in the sports department of a major American newspaper, and thereby won't be forced to propagate the alleged importance of this so-called sporting event yet further, I still unfortunately became aware of the circumstances of the match -- namely that the game is being held somewhere in Florida, that the Chicago Bears are playing against the Indianapolis Colts, and that for whatever reason, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has revealed that she favors the Colts. (Apparently not much going on concerning world affairs this weekend.)

Thank the maker that here in Europe, there are much more significant sporting events to watch, such as the team handball world championship, which earlier today in Köln pitted Germany against Poland. For those of you not particularly familiar with team handball -- which, from what I understand, counts as everyone from the United States -- it's a game that's best understood as water polo without the water. That said, it also features certain athletic and regulatory similarities to basketball, ice hockey and baseball.

I must admit that at times I caught myself getting excited. The Poles trailed the entire match and indeed eventually lost, even though the referees were French; I cannot think of a more binding theme for those two peoples other than an historical opposition to Germans. The result was somewhat disappointing for me, as I was backing Poland for this particular encounter. I did this mostly to irritate my wife, who was supporting her countrymen, but also partially because the German coach resembled a walrus in my opinion, which I found somewhat disturbing.

Overall, the main impression I got from this game was not good. The players -- each of whom, like their soccer playing counterparts, has a unique hairstyle -- must wear uniforms resembling those from Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, which are unflattering to say the least. The field players flip the ball casually to one another when in possession of it, then violently thrust it at the opposing goal when they find the best opportunity. The goalkeepers' official uniforms most closely resemble sweatshirts, which, like five-year old ice hockey goalkeepers padded to the point of immobility by their overzealous mothers, seem to be mostly for protection. If I would have played it when I was in high school, I certainly would have been ridiculed or worse.

However, had I participated in the sporting events we watched in the morning -- the world championships for 2-man luge -- the butt-kicking I would have endured for participating in team handball would have seemed insignificant. Germans here love their winter sports, which is all fine and good. But I must say I'm somewhat shocked by this 2-man luge. The two athletes that participate in this high-speed sport must spend incredible amounts of time in -- how to put it without sounding like an ass? -- very close contact to one another. As the program progressed, I did not intend to mention that I considered this circumstance a bit uncommon and perhaps exceeding the same-sex personal proximity norms of many societies. But then when I realized the main sponsor for this event -- apparently a Swiss firm with the unfortunate initials "F," "A," and "G" -- had displayed their logo not only on the front of each competitor's jersey, but also all over the track and the podium, well, I had no choice but to mention it, because it was just too funny not to, and because I was practically rolling on the ground laughing already.

Still, I hope that does not make me insensitive, because I really do not like to laugh at the differences between peoples. And regardless, the athleticism with which those luge guys perform is ten times as impressive as what any single player in the Super Bowl will manage, regardless of who's playing or how many Roman numerals are involved.