Super Bowl XL: "When Blogging Was Young, We Were Already Old": A Previously Published Essay

By Chuck Klosterman

Originally a blog for ESPN.com and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Sports, this essay is about Super Bowl XL.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Sep 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781451621136

Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of ten nonfiction books (including The Nineties; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; and But What If We’re Wrong?), two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. He was raised in rural North Dakota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Super Bowl XL: When Blogging Was Young, We Were Already Old

A Previously Published Essay

Chuck Klosterman

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Copyright © 2010 by Chuck Klosterman

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First Scribner ebook edition September 2010

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Reprinted with permission from ESPN.com.

Super Bowl XL: When Blogging Was Young, We Were Already Old

Sunday, 11:30 p.m. ET

Here is a true story about Detroit that happened to somebody who isn’t me: A man employed at one of the city’s two major newspapers exited his downtown Detroit office to go home and drink a glass of wine. He worked the late shift, so it was already around midnight. The journalist adjusted his glasses and chatted on his cellular telephone, briskly striding down the sidewalk toward the company parking lot.

Suddenly, an unknown car pulled alongside the journalist, screeching to a halt; a large gentleman emerged from behind its steering wheel. The unknown gentleman walked over to the newspaperman and wordlessly punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Get up, said the puncher. Get up! The newspaperman did not get up, as he suspected following these directions would result in more face-punching. Get up, the unknown assailant repeated. Get up! You know what this is about! You know what this is about!

The puncher kept making demands, but the victim’s terror slowly morphed into mild confusion; to the best of his recollection, he had done nothing to warrant an unannounced pummeling.

I think you have the wrong guy, he said, still crouching on the Michigan pavement. I’ve never seen you before. I was just walking to my car. You are hitting the wrong guy. The journalist peered up at his attacker; the attacker looked down at his victim’s face. It became clear to the puncher that he was, in fact, punching the wrong dude. Obviously, this was an awkward situation. The puncher uttered an expletive, returned to this vehicle, and fled the scene. The newspaperman found his cell phone and readjusted his glasses. He found himself oddly unsurprised by the event that had transpired. This, after all, was his hometown.

It’s great to be in Detroit.

When ESPN initially asked me to cover Super Bowl XL, I was hesitant. I have a lot on my plate these days: I’m developing a sitcom for UPN about Antonio Davis’s wife (it is tentatively titled Oh, No, You Did Not Just Use the Metric System! and is slated to star Wanda Sykes). I’m also trying to reenergize the tourist economy of New Orleans with unconventional humanitarian Anna Benson (she’s like a cross between Thomas Paine and Albert Schweitzer, plus a killer rack). I enjoy watching football, but I also enjoy contributing to the actualization of society; in gambling