Nerf Bowl

The Superball was a children’s toy in the 1960s, and was allegedly the inspiration AFL commissioner Lamar Hunt needed to coin the name for NFL’s big game.

It could have just as easily have been the Nerf Bowl.

Neil Leifer, the legendary sports photographer recalls that the first national football championship lacked the spectacle of today’s contest.  According to Leifer, it wasn’t considered to be a big deal, and few expected it to become the fixture of American culture that it is today. Held in 1967, the most expensive ticket was $12, and there were still 20,000 empty seats in LA Coliseum.

Today, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year in the United States, in fact, 163 million people tuned in for part of the game in 2012. That’s 40 million more people than the number that voted in our recent presidential election.

Before you drift away to alluring and beckoning call of  Youtube Super Bowl Commercials, I want to make a few things very clear.  This will not be a moral lesson on America’s low voter participation.  Nor will I pontificate on our culture’s fascination with gladiatorial sports. I’ll even spare you an analysis the “socialist” business model of this most American of sports leagues. These are all interesting discussion points, but tertiary to the issue at hand. 

I want to know what possesses 163 million people (myself included) to watch a confusing, long and (for some) moderately boring sports event?

It’s been a long week, if I lack profundity today, I hope you will accept brevity.

I will cut to the chase.

I think that within the human spirit there is a desire to connect with a cause greater oneself, and sports give an opportunity to gather with other people and focus on a common cause or team. Whether as participants or fans, these games elicit powerful feelings of shared purpose and common focus, and community can form that transcends race, gender and class.

This week, Gifford Pinchot III, one of BGIs cofounders advised our class to find purpose in a cause greater than ourselves. I don’t think he was suggesting we root for the Jets.

Nonetheless, those of us that talk a good sustainability game could learn a thing from sports, and would do well to create a similar sense of camaraderie, purpose and team spirit around our common goals. 

Like the Super Bowl, sustainability is a big deal, but it’s not a spectator sport.