Thoughtful (Civilized) Nation Questioning Whether Anyone Can Really 'Win' The Super Bowl

MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country's attention, excitement over the NFL's championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself.

"We always say that one football team 'wins' the Super Bowl and one football team 'loses' it, but when you think about it—really think about it outside the narrow framework of scoring points—is that an accurate assessment of what happens?" Wheeling, WV resident Matthew Holland said. "One team celebrates while another walks solemnly back into the tunnel, but why? Another football season will begin again soon, and in the fullness of time, another Super Bowl will be played as if nothing had happened. And in a way, nothing has."

Holland's ambivalence toward what he calls "the tenuous and ephemeral concept of victory" is representative of a large and growing movement in football fandom. Although Super Bowl parties are going ahead as scheduled, many are puzzled, and even resentful, saying that in the span of a lifetime nobody ever really wins or loses, a fact that, by natural deduction, would also include Super Bowl participants.

"Name one absolute thing that makes one team a Super Bowl winner and the other a loser besides the score," Colts fan Gary Lam said. "You can't. It's all relative. They both play in the same game for the same amount of time in the same sport after playing the same number of games. Any differences, such as how many times one team gets the ball to a certain area or propels it through the uprights, are relatively minor. Saying that scoring fewer points is what makes a loser is disingenuous."