Where Have All the Frogs Gone?

I used to wake up on Sunday morning to ESPN's pre-game football show. When this ended, I would turn to Fox's pre-game and then enjoy the day's double-header. This used to be a Sunday ritual. Since my arrival at Harvard, I have not managed to fit in one game in its entirety into my schedule.

Over intersession, I reveled in the opportunity to watch the biggest game of the year without anything else to divert my attention. And when I turned on the pre-game on Jan. 31, I started to learn about the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans. After years of following football I watched the sport in complete ignorance. I had no idea who many of the players were and many of the people I recognized, I remembered in different uniforms. The Green Bay Packers and Denver Broncos were nowhere to be found. The consequence of rules intended to reward teams for poor records with early draft picks and easy schedules had resulted in a new crop of elite teams.

I tuned into the unfamiliar game and not even the commercials, one thing that I thought would have been constant over the year had changed. McDonald's and Coca-Cola, companies once considered dependable for creative advertisements, were replaced by no-name dot.com companies. And the dot.coms took expensive advertising time, put on cheap ads and got everyone's attention. The profusion left them all muddled together--I remember cowboys herding cats and a monkey dancing, but I cannot remember any of the names of the companies or what the advertisements hoped to promote.

Bud Bowl had long ago ended, but now neither Michael Jordan nor Nike decided to make an appearance. The Budweiser frogs had nothing to say. When the third quarter rolled around, I was already asleep on the couch. I awoke from my slumber to catch the fourth quarter heroics, but it just wasn't the same. Harvard's schedule might not allow me to return to my old ritual on Sunday. But next year, since I can no longer count on the advertisements to capture my attention during the Super Bowl, I will make time to stay up to date with the changing league.

--Benjamin M. Grossman