Super Bowl XLV Implications for the Motor City

Okay so aside from being a fan of my hometown St. Louis sports teams, I will have to admit that I am also a Detroit Lions fan...yes, yes go ahead and get the laughs out now. Last season, I was rooting for the two worst teams in the NFL.  But this year was a different story for both of those teams.  The Rams found themselves playing in what was essentially a play-in game for the playoffs against Seattle in the final game of the regular season.  The Lions, some experts said, may have finished out the season as the best sub-500 team in the league. For the first time in a while, I enjoyed watching football this year.  But what was especially exciting for me is that my team pulled off the win that some are now pointing to as the turnaround of the Packers' season.  

The Super Bowl put me in a funny spot...on one hand there were my division rival Packers, on the other, Ben Roethlisburger.  Herein lied the problem for me.  Roethlisburger, to me, represents a good part of what is wrong with professional sports.  Roethlisburger, like so many other professional athletes, shows us all that it's okay to be a reckless, irresponsible, even immoral human being, as long as you're a celebrity.  He teaches us the lesson that a certain amount of money can make any problem go away.  And he lets us know that for some reason, in the end, people like him can still be "winners" in our society:  He's already won 2 Super Bowls.

For this reason, I cannot find it in myself to EVER root for him, or that organization.  The good thing about this dilemma, however, was that the Packers represent the total opposite.  Not only do the Packers have a much more likable and wholesome image, but they are what football should be.  They are a gritty, hard-playing, well-rounded, TEAM-ORIENTED group of players set on a TEAM GOAL.  They are not a band of individuals focused on personal achievements like so many other teams are.  So, despite them being my divisional foe, and as much as all the Bears fans that surround me here at Bradley are gonna hate this:  they were the "good guys" in this one.  And I'm proud to have been the team to beat them to inspire the rest of this amazing run.

Look out for the Lions next season.  They are an up and coming team, mark my words.