The NFL & the Super Bowl in Popular Culture

Sports in general play a large part in our society therefore some sports are bound to be part of popular culture. American football is one of those popular sports and in particular the NFL(National Football League).

 

The NFL draws a lot of attention in our society but it only really draws attention when it is active. The NFL has an off-season when the sport steps out of the spot light. The NBA (National Basketball Association), the MLB (Major League Baseball), the NHL (National Hockey League), and other sports do this to create a big hype when the sport comes back. During the off-season there is still activity in each sport, for instance in the NFL there is still training activity, the NFL Combine, the Draft, and news of players activity and trades.

 

Before the beginning of the season there is a period in which a couple of games that are called pre-season games. These have really no relevance to the regular season and are really practice matches for the teams as well as promoters for the return of the sport. The pre-season games are generally just testing out new plays and working out new players who haven't played in any NFL games before.

 

When then the regular season start, all the games are on Sundays except for one on Monday and Thursday. Since the season schedule is set before the season starts, sometimes teams are better then they were at the start. As the weekends go by teams build up a record of wins and losses and the ones with the best records usually make it into the post-season.

 

The NFL has two subsections, the AFC(American Football Conference) and the NFC(National Football Conference). Each of these is divided into 4 Divisions(East, West, North, and South) and each of those divisions has 4 teams in them. There are a total of 16 teams per conference and 32 teams in the NFL. Each AFC and NFC team plays the other teams in its own division twice (home and away) during the regular season, in addition to 10 other games assigned to their schedule by the NFL. Those assigned games are chosen by what a teams conference standings look like and by random assignment in which teams play other in conference teams or out of conference teams.

 

The post-season is made up of 19 games called the playoffs where there is a Wild Card round, the Divisional round, the Conference championships, and finally the Super Bowl. The teams that make it to the playoffs have the best record within their respective division and out of these 12 teams all have the same chance to make it to the Super Bowl if they win their games. If a team looses a game they are out of the playoffs immediately. The Super Bowl consists of a NFC team and AFC team against each other while the rest of the playoff games are split so that the teams that make it to the Super Bowl are the best of the two leagues.

 

The Super Bowl is a very popular activity in the U.S. and people who don't even follow it are usually affected by it somehow even if it is just hearing about it or seeing something related to the event. Most news outlets at least mention it and social media sources are usually ablaze in ads and promotions for it. There is usually a popular band that plays at halftime and there is even a draw to watch the ads during the halftime and throughout the game. Companies shell out tons of money to get their ads on air during the Super Bowl and they are usually funny or creative in some way or another. People usually pick out a team they think will win and cheer for them. The event is largely a social gathering exercise where food is shoved down throats. Chips such as Doritos and Tostitos are usually found at Super Bowl parties as well as drinks such as Pepsi, Coke, and Budweiser. It's almost a holiday for a lot of sports fans and has become a day to sit around and watch the final football game of the year. Popular TV shows reference the Super Bowl just like Halloween and Christmas, there is high stakes betting involved on the scores and victory of the games.

 

Here is an example of a Doritos commercial that was played last Super Bowl as part of promoting Doritos as a great snack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

iPhone, long live the king?

The dominance of the iPhone in the mobile market seems like it’s been going on for a long time.  As it’s that time of year again, everyone’s excited about the unbelievable hardware and the stunning updates for the new iPhone. I’m sure you’ve heard of the release of the new iPhone 5S and 5C this past week. However if you backtrack not even 8 years ago, the iPhone was not even on the market yet!  So can you recall the last major mobile company that dominated the scene? You guessed it, its old rival Blackberry! But what happened to this once prestigious company and will it happen to Apple too?

It wasn’t long ago Blackberry phones were the crown jewel of the mobile device market.  At the time, Blackberry offered revolutionary products that included concrete security software and were one of the first to showcase an amazing mini-keyboard pad. A must have at that time, it was a sophisticated mobile device that offered easy texting for the youth and was the quintessential phone for the important business executive.

However, slowly the Blackberry line waned in popularity. When the iPhone was first released in 2007, it was naturally dubbed the “Blackberry Killer.”  The ease of having tunes on a widely used musical platform such as iTunes and an easy to use touchscreen proved to be an instant attraction.  Software glitches that didn’t allow network and email to work deteriorated Blackberry’s reputation as well. Corporate giants such as Yahoo Inc. and Halliburton Co. replaced their employee mobiles from Blackberry models to more consumer-friendly devices, which at one time were 70 % of it’s subscribed users. 

So will the iPhone continue to dominate the market in the future? Will consumers continue to flock to Apple stores and wait in line for hours? We may soon find out in the next coming months, as new releases of anticipated smartphones are set to be unveiled.  

All I know is in two weeks, I will be in line for the new iPhone 5S!