Last Sunday marked a special day for people who aren’t fans of football. Yep – it was Super Bowl Sunday, the official end of the football season. There will be sighs of relief from people all across the country. By people, I mean women who want the men in their lives to do something besides vegetate on the couch all weekend fixated on the TV.

Me saying that probably sounds sexist here in 2023. I need to recognize that there are more female football fans than ever before.

In the news on Sunday, I gathered that Utah was the first state to have an all-girls youth American football league – in the world! It was founded in 2015. There was a 30-second advertisement about it during the game on Sunday.

If you didn’t know, the Kansas City Chiefs lined up against the Philadelphia Eagles for Super Bowl LVII. (“I” for “one” am a fan of Roman numerals) The game decided that the Chiefs are the NFL champions for the season. (38 – 35 was the score in an exciting game)

What some people forget is that there is a huge non-football side to the Super Bowl. Many non-football fans can enjoy the game just for the television commercials alone. Advertisers pay millions of dollars for 30 second spots.

Many companies use the game as a time to kick off new products. Traditionally, the ads have been entertaining and sometimes are talked about the day after nearly as much as the football game itself.

I look forward to the half-time show. However, as I grow older, the musical entertainment has gotten less and less “entertaining” to me.

This year, a pregnant Rihanna headlined the show. She’s a “big deal” and wildly popular, especially with the younger generation. She has a net worth of $1.4 billion. I looked it up. Even so, I was disappointed with the show. It was just weird and weirdly sexualized, in my opinion.

I guess I’m just wishing for the good old days – when I saw musical acts at the Super Bowl that have been around for a while doing an old-fashioned performance. In the past few years, it’s hard to pick out anyone who fits that bill. Yes, we’ve had Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Madonna and Beyoncé who have kind of been in that category.

But if you go back to 2010, the show was done by The Who. Now that takes me back to my “terra firma.” — the solid ground of my era. They’re older than I am. The year before that it was Bruce Springsteen. He’s older than I am. The year before that it was Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Tom was older than me and passed away in 2017. You get the idea.

I stopped right there because the year before that, the entertainer was Prince. He was six years younger than me. But before that it was The Rolling Stones and in 2005 it was Paul McCartney. Mick Jagger and Paul are, of course, older than me.

These old performers did a good job with the show. There were no mishaps. No muss. No fuss. No wardrobe malfunctions. (Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed the year before McCartney and had the memorable R-rated moment)

Seeing the “oldie but goodie” musicians was good for my soul. It reminded me that even though I’m aging, it’s possible to remain youthful. Getting older is a fact of life that is inescapable. I like to fantasize that it’s not happening. My brain goes along with the fantasy. It’s my hip and my knee that seem to be stuck in reality.

I have to catch myself sometimes so that I don’t sound old when I’m talking with people. I stood up in front of a group of boys and men at a church meeting some time back. As I started to speak, I was inclined to declare, “What I’m about to say is going to sound like a broken record to you guys.”

It suddenly occurred to me that well over half of my audience didn’t really have any experience or remembrance of what it was like to deal with a vinyl record that skips and repeats. (Strangely vinyl is making a comeback. I gave my wife a double album of Frank Sinatra for her birthday last year.)

Whether you’re old or young, I hope you enjoyed your Super Bowl weekend. If you didn’t care about the game, I hope you had fun watching the advertisements and the half time show. Now we can all enjoy the football “off season.” (I got an email from BYU the other day. Season football ticket seat selection begins Feb. 22 – not much of an “off-season,” eh?) – Merrill

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