Next Thursday night, my wife and I are heading to London.
There will be shows (“Hamilton”! “Les Mis”!), museums, hopefully a tour of Wembley Stadium and just the overall experience of being in London, even though the January weather might be kind of sketchy.
But I just realized another feature of our trip, which will also include several days in Edinburgh, Scotland.
We’re going to miss almost all of the Super Bowl hype. In fact, we just going to get back in time for the game.
Even though Fulham owner Shahid Khan’s Jacksonville Jaguars play annually in London and are playing for the AFC title this Sunday, and an NFL team in London is the league’s own version of trying to make “fetch” happen, there can’t be the same level of overkill, right?
After all, the sporting press have other matters to concern themselves with … the end of the January transfer window. How will contenders and squads in relegation battles alike try to fortify themselves for the rest of the season? The public is hungry to know!
After all, Manchester City lost a game, so they might try to buy Liverpool’s entire front line … you know, for depth.
Regardless of who’s in the Super Bowl, its ubiquity for a two-week period, especially the week right before the game, is obnoxious enough.
It’ll be even worse if the New England Patriots make it. After all, it’s several days before the AFC title game, and we’ve already been subjected to a story about how Tom Brady has cousins in Minnesota!
Surely, we’ll hear about how either Philadelphia or Minnesota is just another “tomato can,” and how an article which does little more than say that successful people tend to develop large egos and large egos tend to clash is motivating the team to prove their “haters” (who, of course, include the commissioner, the officials, the television networks, the Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission and every soul outside of New England and apparently one town in Minnesota) wrong yet again.
If the Patriots play the Vikings, of course it will be massively unfair that they have to play on Minnesota’s home field — and why can’t the Patriots have a Super Bowl of their own — and the “skol” chant is the kind of dumb thing the Patriots and their fans would never debase themselves with.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4IhAJiTEh1I
And since the world doesn’t exist outside of Route 495, I’m sure no one will realize they do it better in Iceland, anyway.
Naturally, there is the possibility the Patriots will lose this Sunday, in which case the days before my departure will be filled with “Pats … in the Pro Bowl” stories, followed by a week of how even though the Jaguars and Minnesota or Philadelphia are playing in the Super Bowl, it’s actually still all about the Patriots.
But what will I care? I’ll be an ocean away.
A Silly Place 