“The
Trojan War will not take place.” The noble, sensible Trojan chieftain Hector
says this repeatedly throughout Jean Giraudoux’s sublime play Tiger at the Gates. With his wife,
Andromache, pregnant, Hector is determined to preserve the peace between his
country and Greece after the willful Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus,
has taken up with the Trojan Paris. Ultimately, though, Hector’s insistent plea
(wishful thinking, really), spoken inside the gates of Troy, goes unheeded in
an inexorable and fateful rush to battle.
As
the snow fell and the temperature in the New York metropolitan area remained
below freezing in late January, the day for the National Football League’s
final skirmish approached. As surely everyone from Pershing Square to Persia knows
by now, this Sunday will be the first time that the Super Bowl will be staged—and
no sporting event is more staged than this game—outdoors (about
30 miles from New Jersey chieftain Chris Christie’s Sparta) in a cold-weather
stadium.
And
as I thought of the impending spectacle, and of all things bloated and
self-important connected to the event, I was reminded of Hector’s futile words.
Could they signify a contemporary football parallel? Where was the voice of
reason during the original discussion over the site of this year’s Super Bowl?
Was there no level-headed Hector in the NFL conference room when the debate
took place? No one with the common sense to prevail over the lunatic consensus
willing to risk leaving pro football’s championship to be determined by the
vagaries of winter weather in the northeast?
Hector’s
Greek counterpart Ulysses, dubious over the prospects of peaceful co-existence,
is nevertheless persuaded by the steadfastness of Hector. Still, he offers a clear-eyed
and damning conclusion about the inevitability of war. “One of the privileges of
the great is to witness catastrophe from a terrace,” he tells Hector. For
despite Hector’s brave insistence, because of a lie, the Greeks would eventually
launch a thousand ships against Troy.
Could
those words from Ulysses also help explain why and where the Super Bowl this weekend
would take place? I picture NFL executives and their corporate business and
media partners rolling in comfort and stylish charm in the sheltered,
climate-controlled terrace of Met Life stadium’s luxury boxes, safely witnessing
what could be a weather-affected catastrophe on the field.
And I wonder if the misguided decision to play the Super Bowl in a cold-weather stadium might have been different had the principals involved in the discussion been apprised that they would have to sit, Bowie Kuhn-style (sans overcoat and long underwear), among the non-privileged out in the uncomfortably bitter winter air.
