A Super Bowl to Savor?

Super Bowl weekend is upon us, with its customary gusher of hype. TV's sports commentators seem to rise to new levels of noisy bonhomie as they try to keep up with the overdone graphics and pseudo-monumental music.

"C'mon guys, it's only a ballgame," you feel compelled to say before hitting the "mute."

And that, in fact, is what you have once the preliminary hoopla has dissipated - a simple athletic contest. This year, we're pleased to note, it promises to be of more than passing interest (and not just because both quarterbacks are relative newcomers, and one's even a running threat).

Super Bowls have been famously anticlimactic. The winner was often a foregone conclusion and the score lopsided. But as Monitor sports columnist Doug Looney explains in today's paper, the National Football League has done a lot to banish the boredom. Salary caps have spread the talent around, as the mostly close playoff games attested.

Now we have the Tennessee Titans and St. Louis Rams bringing a new cast of players to football's biggest production. Let's hope they throw out the old script and give us a truly memorable game.

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