Why Super Bowl LIII so emphatically failed to live up to the fanfare, hype and crescendo

It was a Super Bowl that won’t live long in the memory for a couple of significant reasons

What do you call a Super Bowl that wasn’t super? Just a bowl?

Well, the New England Patriots won the bowl on Sunday night and it might go down as one of the most forgettable in history, a dynasty-padding Lombardi win in Atlanta that brings little magic or drama to add to the NFL’s rich folklore.

A year after the Philly Special, an extraordinarily daring trick play that changed the course of a Super Bowl, Sunday night’s most iconic play was probably the one that saw a declining Tom Brady throwing a lob pass to a declining Rob Gronkowski for a reception that would leave them two yards short of the end zone ahead of the only touchdown of a low-scoring game.

When compared to a running back receiving a direct snap, tossing to a jet-motion tight end who throws a pass for the back-up quarterback to catch a touchdown, it didn’t quite register on the drama scale. If the Philly Special was an earthquake, this play was the sort of rumble you get when somebody drops their plate.

It was a Super Bowl that won’t live long in the memory for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it was another victory for a Patriots franchise that has already claimed so many records and is merely adding another number to each category every year or so. This was an extra statistic for the history books, but it feels like a game that will have little historical significance for the league. No batons were passed, no new eras were ushered anywhere, the Pats just won again and reminded the world how having the most successful QB of all-time on a below-market salary can keep you competitive.

These dynasty-strengthening wins are a peculiarity of sport because they are, in many ways, greatness in its purest form. Winning repeatedly and consistently with the same key pillars in place, especially in American sports where competitive parity is part of the league’s DNA, is the hardest thing to do.

When Tiger Woods was winning every event in sight or Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team were stacking up trophies, there was a feeling of greatness powering on. That is the same with these Patriots, maybe not the most explosive or entertaining to watch but undeniably really bloody good.

Perhaps we should appreciate it more when we see it. There is an element of Lionel Messi’s problem in that overexposure to greatness makes us become complacent to it. We will miss it when it’s gone because historically great achievements are almost always more interesting in retrospect than in the moment.

As an isolated event, though, this Super Bowl was objectively bad simply because so many people tune in for entertainment and there was none of the drama or beauty football can provide. Patriots glory aside, this just wasn’t easy on the eye.

The first Sunday night in February is an institution that is embedded in American culture as a time when people get together and watch a major sporting event, which is great because not every country has these. But with so many casual viewers comes a thirst for entertainment in both the traditional sporting sense and now the all-encompassing audio-visual world that has sprung up around this game. It might not have had either.

Of the 20 most-watched broadcasts in American TV history, 17 are Super Bowls. Most of the 110m-plus viewers tuning in are seeking entertainment, and even those who tuned in for the half-time show or - ahem - side-splitting commercials would have been left disappointed by Atlanta’s Super Bowl. Maroon 5? In 2019? In the home of hip-hop?

When you think about it, the cultural sway of a big event like this is peculiar because it’s strong enough that people watch it even when they don’t care about the outcome, the teams competing or even the bands performing.

This Super Bowl won't live long in the memory (AFP/Getty)

Nobody outside New England wanted to see the Patriots win, the Rams’ fanbase is famously weak and fractured while neither the game or show provided moments to go down in legend nor infamy.

It was a nothing - a record-breaking nothing that could one day be significant as Brady’s final Super Bowl or Sean McVay’s first of many - but still a nothing.

That’s an unusual thing to process for a sports fixture of such fanfare, hype and crescendo. History, we must assume, will remember this more kindly.