Of Olympics...and Super Bowls

 2/9

Olympics and Kap

This week we find the convergence of two events…the Olympics and the Super Bowl. I have a hat from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics….and also the official USA team beret …controversial because it was made by ROOTS, a Canadian company.  Twenty years ago.... 

The 2002 Olympics were the first after 9-11 so security was very high. There were a number of firsts. Janica Kostelic won 3 golds and a silver for the first medals for a Croatian woman. It was the first Winter  Olympics for “extreme” sports…snowboarding, etc. Sarah Hughes and Michelle Kwan were the prominent USA figure skaters. China won its first winter medal.  Australia was the first southern hemisphere country to winter medal and Canada won the gold in hockey for the first time in 50 years. 

As for the Super Bowl, it is of course the annual midwinter day of excess and indulgence and ubiquitous Super Bowl parties. In 1990, Spring Valley Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina created the Souper Bowl of Caring as a way to encourage excess into largesse, selling bowls of Soup to raise money for hunger. In my church, West Park in New York City, we participated for many years. When my Steelers played in1996, I announced soup for $1, unless you root for the  Cowboys, in which case $2. 

If the Steelers are not in the Super Bowl, the only jersey I can wear is Colin Kaepernick’s. For al the declarations of new awareness, as long as Kaepernick is not part of the sport, it remains a sham. Brian Flores’ suit against the NFL over discrimination in hiring practices despite the “Rooney Rule” (named for late Steelers owners Dan Rooney) requiring interviews of minority candidates highlights the ongoing racism. Until Love Smith was hired last week, in a league where 70% of then players are black, only one of the 32 teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Mike Tomlin, have a Black coach. So I wear Kap’s 7 as a reminder.

This year with Rams and Bengals, I’m pretty much no dog in this fight. Except as a Steelers fan I just can’t root for the Bengals despite a cool young quarterback, Joe Burrow, who led LSU to a title. (Where they had jerseys with his name spelled Bureaux for fun…) And the Rams quarterback Matt Stafford is an older guy who labored long unrewarding years in Detroit, so the older guy gets my vote.

The connector between the Olympics and Super Bowl is this… a Super Bowl without the Patriots or Tom Brady to root against is like the Olympics whiteout the Soviet Union…just not as much fun…

So hats off to Colin Kaepernick and on for the Olympics,,,,