Super Bowl Analysis Papers

Super Bowl Viewing & Analysis Paper: The Super Bowl’s Pressured Audience & the FoMO

This year’s Super Bowl seemed to largely lack the flair of last year’s (except in the case of fans’ post game celebrations), but the entirety of the broadcast still provided a variety of explanations as to why the game continues to be so popular. Super Bowl LII, like many that predated it, was yet another example of how willing Americans are to halt usually neverending discourse on a wide range of topics (especially economic and political in relation to the event) to gleefully immerse themselves in the excesses of the big game. Even as millions of Americans took to social media to voice how little they cared about the event or criticize its rampant displays

The average American’s unyielding need to watch the Super Bowl and participate in some way is the textbook case of Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence, as 103 million unique viewers had the same thought in regard to the cultural event that is the Super Bowl in that none of them were willing to miss out on being a part of

While there were many comments posted throughout the stream about Christianity by fans and commentators (most prominently Tony Dungy about Nick Foles) alike, the only real instances of religion showing up during the Super Bowl (aside from the Toyota “One Team” commercial) came from the players themselves post game. Nick Foles, while being presented with the Super Bowl MVP trophy shared his wish to become a pastor, thus validating Dungy’s previous article about Foles’ faith and the defense of his comments that the Holy Spirit would help lead him to victory. Although many Christians congratulated Foles for his post-career aspirations as well as Eagles’ coach Doug Pederson for praising God post-win, the connection to Christianity isn’t completely necessary for even the most fundamentalist Christians to watch the Super Bowl. Whether or not any player or coach expressed their Christian faith, religious football fans would still gain the experience of watching the game and more than likely wouldn’t change the channel due to a player failing to pray while waiting for the chains to move or some other outright endorsement of sharing the same religion. Toyota’s minute long ad depicting the religious leaders of the nation’s largest