Superball/bowl.
So ... I tried to understand what this american football thing is all about. What got me interested in it was an anime from Japan called Eyeshield 21 where a boy that ran errants for bullies his whole school life goes into american football as a runner with his great speed and agility. That get me thinking about looking into that sport - it looked quite interesting in the anime.
Boy was I wrong.
So I watched the Superbowl XL - the biggest and most important event in the american football year. The first half was absolutely empty - nothing happened at all. The ads were much more interesting then the game. The halftime show was ok, not as good as ads.
And the second half just showed why this is the definitive american sport in the worst meaning of that - legalese. Steelers would have lost it the judges would have not interfered so much with the game. This sport has like hundreds of tiny rules that are very dependent on interpretation by the judges - that is what I call a sport for all the american lawyers to like. Cancelling several good Seahawks trows just because some guy was holding someone on the other part of the field, that must be givin an ecstasy for every law student. Not for me though.
And even without all that dilation with ridiculous rules (what's that stupidity with running clock and two minute warning ?!?) the game itself is kind of dumb - there are just too many people in the field for anything that a regular person can really understand. Strategies that almost never work out because of the other team interfering with their strategy. Too much chaos and still each person only does a one single thing. Even more - many of the players never will get any attention in the game just because they are on a supporting position, but the quarterback will always be the center of attention.
A very unbalanced game that is even more screwed by a ton of ads, a very heavy leaning on judging nitpicks and just 3-4 nice moments in the whole 1 hour game. I'll just stick back with hockey and anime :)