Today is the biggest day in American sports for many, the
Super Bowl. It’s what distinguishes Soccer from Football. It always amuses me
to hear Europeans try to claim that Soccer players are better athletes than
American Football players. No, they are better actors. That’s about the end of
that story. I would love to see some of those skinny-ass Europeans try to play
one quarter of American Football. I think then they really would be crying,
unlike the crocodile tears that are shed on the pitch on any given day. There
was a moment when I actually thought I respected Soccer, but living in Italy
and watching the histrionics, no thanks. Watching Cricket in India, now that
was an eye opener.
However, today is about the Ravens and the 49er’s.
Two team names that epitomize America in a nutshell. The
former is named after the quirky poem by Baltimore native, Edgar Allan Poe, and
the second is the name of the gold-diggers of the 1800’s, trying to make their
name and carve out a piece of history by hook and by crook in the American
West.
No two teams could be more iconic about America than these
two at this moment. Poe, America’s “bad boy” poet, was the Johnny Depp or
Marlon Brando of his time. French, and I repeat FRENCH poets, looked up to him
as the harbinger of new poetry to come.
As for the 49er’s it was that gold fever that fueled the
trans-continental railroad and the infamy of Chinese labor and the
exploitations of Manifest Destiny. And,
yet, that is what makes the United States of America what it is. It is riddled
with contradictions, it is the land of extremes, it is the land of
opportunities and missed opportunities, the land of the American Dream and
broken dreams. It is the land of Poe and the Gold Diggers.
So, how fitting is that?
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