2-1-03

by Edward Cone
News & Record

So, anyone got plans for tonight?

I was thinking about watching me some football. The National Football Conference champion Carolina Panthers are teeing it up in Super Bowl XXXVIII (Channel II, VI:XXV PM), and I have grown very fond of the National Football Conference champion Carolina Panthers.

Most years, the two week wait for the Super Bowl bores me silly. This year, I’ve savored the moment. Not the predictable predictions and human interest featurettes – I’ll be busy having a life during the first few hours of pre-game hype -- but the interlude that has found so many North Carolinians feeling good about the same thing.

Not everyone, of course. “Football is dead to me now,” wrote the Greensboro blogger known as frograbbitmonkey, a disappointed Philadelphia Eagles fan (oops, that’s redundant). Transplanted New Englanders may also be forgiven their heresy.

For the rest of us, it’s just been fun to strike up conversations with logo-clad strangers in the check-out line by saying no more than “Panthers.” It doesn’t matter that our common culture has coalesced around something so trivial as football. In fact, that probably helps. The important stuff -- religion, politics, college basketball -- will always divide us.

When Duke or Carolina or State plays for an NCAA championship (yes, children, Carolina and State used to do that), fans of the other schools feel a little part of themselves die. But the improbable Panthers belong to us all, inviting the whole state to join in the corny glory of sports.

It helps that these Panthers are easy to love: underdogs, overachievers, non-felons, the embodiment of North Carolina humility and the reification of our state motto, Esse quam videre, “To be rather than to seem.” We suffered with them for years, and now they have rewarded us by beating glamour teams in overtime and playing into February.

Win or lose, this moment will never come again. Another motto: sic transit gloria Sunday. Look no further than the squabbling, inept Tampa Bay Buccaneers, last year’s Super Bowl champs, for the debilitating side effects of ultimate success in the NFL. One team that’s avoided many of these hazards, ironically, is New England, the Panther’s opponent in the big game, and even they had a bad year between Super Bowls, and have now burdened their fans with the midnight doubts that come with being favored to win.

And if the Panthers lose, well, the two weeks before their next Super Bowl – should there happen to be one – will be spent worrying that your team is the next-generation Buffalo Bills, perennial also rans, inscribed forever on the right-hand side of the dash in the eternal scorebook.

Either way, Jake Delhomme will never be an unknown again, Stephen Davis will never have quite the same chip on his shoulder again, John Fox will never again be the mystery coach of genius, and Carolina will never never have been to the Super Bowl again. Just because Sheryl Crow butchers her remake of “The first cut is the deepest” doesn’t make it untrue.

That’s why people who don’t watch football will be watching football tonight. Of course, there are those few who remain proudly uninterested. For them, ESPN has scheduled bowling opposite the pre-game show, and then figure-skating during the game. (Is there a sadder job than counter-programmer at ESPN when the big game is on a broadcast network?) Tickets to Oscar-nominated movies and tables at good restaurants will probably be easy to come by, too.

The rest of us sheep will be happily grazing on chips and bleating at our televisions. So who’s going to win? They will play the game in just a few more hours so we can all find out, but I checked my contract, and right there by the private jet and the morals clause it says that if I write about the Super Bowl, I must prognosticate on its outcome.

Panthers, 20-17.