Frequently Asked Questions About The Super Bowl

A primer for people who are not big sports fans.

Q. What sport is the Super Bowl?

A. Football.

Q. Is that the one where they lie down on their backs and try to kill themselves?

A. No, that's the luge. Football is the one where they try to kill themselves standing up.

Q. What happens in a football game?

A. The best description of football I ever heard came from my daughter, Sophie, when she was a little under two years old. This is what she looked like then:

Q. Aww.

A. Yes. Note that in this photo Sophie is wearing a Cinderella dress. Back then she was obsessed with princess stories, especially Snow White. She watched the Disney Snow White movie multiple times a day, and when she wasn't watching it, her favorite game was to re-enact the plot with little toy figurines. I wrote about this game in a column:

Snow White is played by a Snow White figurine. The seven dwarfs are played by six dwarfs (Sleepy is currently missing). The wicked witch is played by a Fisher-Price Little People construction worker, who wears a hard hat, as if to say: "I may be evil incarnate, but, dang it, I am not exempt from OSHA regulations!" The poison apple is played by a plastic apple from Sophie's play kitchen. It's roughly 10 times the size of Snow White's head; even if she didn't eat it, this thing could SCARE her into a coma. The handsome prince is usually played by a handsome prince, although recently he was misplaced, so Snow White was awakened from her coma by a romantic kiss from: a sheep. It's from the Fisher-Price farm set, and as sheep go, it's reasonably handsome.

And so on. Sophie wanted to play this game ALL THE TIME. So if you were the parent in charge, you spent hours on the floor participating in the drama, which meant you had to supply the voices of the dwarfs, the witch and the handsome prince, because Sophie was of course fully occupied being Snow White. It could get exhausting.

Q. What the hell does this have to do with the Super Bowl?

A. I'm getting there. One Sunday afternoon I was taking care of Sophie, and after we had re-enacted the Snow White story maybe 75 times I was desperate to distract her, so I turned on the TV, which was showing a football game. Sophie watched it for only a few minutes, but in that brief time she was able to grasp the essence of the sport of football, as follows:

— When the players went to the line of scrimmage, she said: "Ready!"

— When they ran a play, she said: "Fall down!"

— When a player got injured, she said: "Boo-boo."

That's really it. Football has three components: Ready, Fall Down and Boo-boo. In between these components there are team meetings, called "huddles," and timeouts that can last as long as dental school, and — if it's a really important game — Taylor Swift. But these are just fillers; without them the game would be over in ten minutes and there would be no mechanism for showing billions of dollars worth of TV commercials.

Q. But isn't there more to the game than that?

A. If you want to get technical, yes. The key concept is "downs." You're permitted four downs to make a first down, which then gives you four more downs. So you can make a first down on a first down, or on a second down, or on a third down, or even on a fourth down, although you usually don't try to make a first down on a fourth down because if you don’t make the first down on fourth down, then the OTHER team has a first down close to where, or exactly where, you just had your fourth down.

Q. This is hideously boring.

A. Well you asked.

Q. Which teams are playing in this year's Super Bowl?

A. The Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Q. Why isn't Kansas City located in Kansas?

A. It should be.

Q. Which team is favored to win the game?

A. The Chiefs are favored because they have a solid team, a strong coaching staff and Taylor Swift. Also NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has instructed the referees to "do whatever it takes to prevent the Eagles from winning, including the use of tasers."

Q. I don’t believe that.

A. It's right here on the Internet.

Q. Why doesn't the NFL want the Eagles to win?

A. Because when the Eagles win, their fans riot.

Q. What do they do when the Eagles lose?

A. They riot, but not as much.

Q. Do the Chiefs fans do anything annoying?

A. Yes. They do the "Tomahawk Chop" chant, in which they move their forearms forward and back in unison while moaning "Ohhh," so it sounds as though everybody in the stadium is passing a kidney stone the size of a mature walnut.

Q. What can the letters in "KANSAS CITY CHIEFS" be rearranged to spell?

A. "FANATICS? HICKS? YES!"

Q. What about "PHILADELPHIA EAGLES?"

A. "HELP! I LAID A GAL SHEEP!"

Q. This has been a very helpful primer on the Super Bowl! Thank you!

A. You're welcome. And now it's time for a scientific poll of you paid subscribers, who are my favorite humans on the planet.