The Green Bay Packers’ 31-25 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV on Sunday was exciting. It was entertaining. It was fun.
But you know what it wasn’t? Cool.
I don’t know whether the Super Bowl has ever been a cool event. It may have been when the New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. And it may have been when the motorcycle gang known as the Raiders won it in 1976 and 1980.
But it is too much of an over-the-top event — a celebration of excess — to be cool.
It might help if there were some cool players left in the NFL. But they may be few and far between.
Cool may simply not exist anymore, melted away under the heat of today’s overexposed TMZ and Twitter spotlight. Cool is a mystique, and there are very few mysteries when it comes to the personalities that play our games.
This month, GQ magazine celebrates the 25 coolest athletes of all time.
“The icons we remember and revere are not always the ones with the best stats or the slickest end zone dance,” the article stated. “They’re the ones who played the game like it was an expression of who they were and taught us how to be big-time with grace, style and swagger. They’re the guys we never got tired of watching. And never will.”
Those icons are hard to find these days.
Topping the GQ list is the king of cool, Jets Super Bowl winning quarterback Joe Namath. “Namath lived in a way that superstars hadn’t lived before and haven’t lived since — openly and apologetically,” Jonathan Mailer wrote.
Last week, Ben Roethlisberger was criticized for singing in a piano bar late one night in Dallas, although Roethlisberger lost his cool privileges with his disturbing sexual assault allegations last summer.
The GQ list includes Mario Andretti, Allen Iverson, Pel?, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Michael Jordan, Derek Sanderson, Jim Brown and others.
The only current NFL player on the cool list is Tom Brady, but no one who is so connected to one of the most uncool people ever in sports — Patriots coach Bill Belichick — can be considered cool.
Selecting Brady showed how hard it is today to find a sports star who fits the cool mold. GQ named San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum as one of the 25 cool icons, and he may be far closer to cool — a player who you can’t take your eyes off on the field and who marches to a different drummer without seeking the attention that comes with cool.
Aaron Rodgers may be a great quarterback. But there is nothing particularly cool about him. Brett Favre was cool for a while until he started looking at himself in the mirror and asking it who is the coolest one of all. With that, his cool image disappeared.
Troy Polamalu? He might come close to cool, but he lost his chance to define that with his disappearance on the field Sunday. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin may be cool but would have sealed the deal if his team won.
Here’s what is not cool: Watching Cameron Diaz feed A-Rod popcorn during the Super Bowl. A-Rod may be the perfect symbol of this period in time — the uncool era.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
