Jonas Doerr-
Allegedly, there was a Super Bowl last Sunday. Although the commercials and halftime show were arguably subpar, the game did have an exciting finish, so it might be worthy of being called Super. But where was the bowl? How could there be a Super Bowl without a bowl?
The first assumption might be that the trophy is a bowl. It is not. It is a football on an obelisk.
Then one might guess that the game is being played in a bowl. It was not. Allegiant Stadium has a dome and most certainly cannot be considered a bowl.
Were the shiny red things on the players’ heads bowls? No, those are called helmets.
So how can they call it the Super Bowl when the only super bowl around is the guacamole bowl? This naming convention is unjust to all the fine bowls in the world. Surely some useful dish of the world deserves the title of “The Super Bowl” instead of a game that’s strangely interrupted by clips of a blonde pop star.
Take, for example, soup bowls. Imagine the inconvenience of eating soup without a bowl. Either one must bang one’s knuckles on the edge of a cup to scoop it out, eat out of the pot, or lick it off a plate. Eating out of the pot might not sound too bad to people who enjoy a little extra saliva seasoning, but someone always takes all the nice, chunky parts and leaves you with the broth. Avoiding all this puts soup bowls high up on the list, but maybe they are not the G.O.A.T. bowl.
After all, there are candy bowls. How would we welcome people into offices without being able to offer them a small morsel of obesity and tooth decay? The only thing that makes those dull visits tolerable is the hope that they have chocolate instead of cherry Starbursts in their candy bowls. And without the bowls, the candy would be sprawled across the desk like a table at the involvement fair.
Of course, cereal bowls are also near the top of the list. Without them, we would all be like those barbarians who stuff their hands inside the bag to grab out their grainy snacks. With them, we can make boat noises while pushing frosted shredded wheat around in a milk lake.
Plenty of other bowls make the list, too. Fruit bowls, cream bowls, sugar bowls, and gravy bowls are great, all of which should not be confused with bowels, which also usually hold food but are usually found on the inside of one’s torso. One might argue that bowels are even more important than bowls, but that is a discussion worthy of a less renowned newspaper than this.
We must also not forget to mention the bowls on our feet, often called shoes. Not only do those extraordinarily useful bowls protect our feet, but they also protect our noses from our feet.
This brings us to an essential question: what exactly is a bowl? Merriam-Webster defines it as “A concave usually nearly hemispherical vessel: a rounded container that is usually larger than a cup.” This would seem to rule out shoes as bowls, as they are rarely concave or hemispherical. Does this mean that shoes are cups? Merriam-Webster says that cups are bowl-shaped drinking vessels. If they are both shaped like bowls, but bowls are larger, are Stanley Cups bowls? They are larger than most cups.
On the topic of Stanley Cups, it would be nice if all sports championships were so logical. The hockey trophy is actually a cup, but the World Cup is just a globe on a stick. One would think that since Europeans are logical enough to call the sport people mostly use their feet for “football”, they would be logical enough to have a cup at the World Cup.
Regardless, these fake cups and bowls must not be allowed to overshadow the true supper-heroes. Perhaps there is not a single bowl that stands out enough to qualify as The Super Bowl, but every bowl ought to be appreciated, even Super Poopers, commonly known as toilet bowls.
Bowls are like the yin to the earth’s yang. As we rest on this convex globe, it is good to have concave bowls to remind us that if the earth were the other way around, we would be soup. They help keep our minds centered on the gravity of existence just as they keep cereal centered on the gravity of being eaten. So the next time the “Super Bowl” comes around, let us all remember the Super Bowls invented thousands of years previously, laugh at the small absurdity of the situation, and then get back to eating chips and guac because it is much more interesting than contemplating bowls.