Rozhovor s Američanem Trentem, který je fotbalovým fanatikem a povypráví nám, proč je den, kdy se hraje Super Bowl v Americe považován v podstatě za svátek. Pravidelně je přenos tohoto zápasu amerického fotbalu nejsledovanějším televizním pořadem roku, k čemuž přispívá i každoroční nadšení z tzv. "Halftime show", při které vystupují ti nejznámější interpreti světové pop music.
Rozhovor s Američanem Trentem, který je fotbalovým fanatikem a povypráví nám, proč je den, kdy se hraje Super Bowl v Americe považován v podstatě za svátek. Pravidelně je přenos tohoto zápasu amerického fotbalu nejsledovanějším televizním pořadem roku, k čemuž přispívá i každoroční nadšení z tzv. "Halftime show", při které vystupují ti nejznámější interpreti světové pop music.
Welcome to the English-speaking group with Kudrunat Holko. My name is Pavlina and every week I will talk to my parents from all over the English-speaking world about various interesting topics. I would also like to mention one thing If you really want to practice and improve your English, on my page on patreonpatrioncom you will find a complete list of the following conversations, with meanings, phrases and everything else that is worth knowing. And that's all from me at the beginning. Thank you very much for watching this channel and we can start.
Speaker 2:That's perfect. Well, I have to say so, you are an avid football fan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, I'm from California, I farm and I watch a lot of football. It is my favorite sport.
Speaker 2:And you are also one of the hosts of the podcast called the Fantasy Football Dudes. Yeah, so you and your mates, you talk everything kind of football related yes, yes, yes, from a funnier perspective, not quite as serious.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, because today we're actually going to be talking a lot about football. And well, by football we have to say that we mean American football, because you know, in my eyes it would be like football with David Beckham and Messi. When you say football, that's what football means to me, but I guess that's not what it means to you.
Speaker 3:The real football. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, we call it soccer here, the football you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, very cool, and well, today we're actually going to be talking about the event of the American football of the year. I would say, is that how you would call it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the championship game. Championship Sunday is a lot of people call it, but the Super Bowl is that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:That's what we were talking about. Yes, so we're talking about Super Bowl. So if you were to explain, and just a few words or sentences, what Super Bowl is to someone who knows absolutely nothing about football, which is me, what would you say?
Speaker 3:I'd say it's the annual championship game between the AFC and the NFC. So that's the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference, and it's just unlike soccer and basketball and other things, those are series, championship games. Football it's only one game, so there's a lot more upsets. Sometimes the team that shouldn't win will win, because there's only one game. You can't adjust over so many games.
Speaker 2:And so what teams would play during the Super Bowl? Because it's every, we have to say, it's every year, right? Is it the first Sunday of February, first Sunday of?
Speaker 3:February. Yes, so it would be the champion of the NFC versus the champion of the AFC. So and that started in the early 60s it used to just be the NFL, and then the AFL came along and they ended up beating the NFL, I think in the third Super Bowl ever, and it's kind of been going on since then. I think that was like 1963, I believe so.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so the NFL? What's that?
Speaker 3:Yes, the National Football League and that's just. That's the America's professional football league. So it goes from high school to college and, if you're lucky enough, I think 2% and not even not even 1% of college football players make it to the NFL. So that's how hard it is to get there.
Speaker 2:And this is the peak event of the NFL.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's the peak event, so people throw huge parties. Very good food. Usually people get it catered. People barbecue. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And so, like the event I had to Google, all of this is hosted by a different city each year, so is it hard to get actual tickets for the game?
Speaker 3:If you have a lot of money it's not hard, I would say. But yeah, you're looking at for very bad seats, probably $700 US dollars. You know it's very expensive and not every city can get it. Like New York has only hosted one Super Bowl since it's happened because they want it to be in the best weather, because it's an outdoor game and they don't stop for rain, snow, they'll stop for lightning, that's about it. So usually the Super Bowls in California, texas, florida's majority, where it is, is in Florida, so they rotate through city, through city.
Speaker 2:And so have you ever been.
Speaker 3:I've never been. My dad went once as a little boy in the Rose Bowl and he it wasn't a great game, but it's kind of cool that he can tell people he's gone to the Super Bowl. It's just so expensive now and I have so much fun having my own party that I'd rather almost do that.
Speaker 2:Of course, because now that you say that you have your own party, like most Americans they would watch it on TV, I suppose.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I'm wondering how does the day of the Super Bowl look like a normal American household? I?
Speaker 3:think the day of the Super Bowl is the busiest day for the grocery store. Every year it's the first or second, it's that, and Thanksgiving. So they say 30 minutes before kickoff the grocery store is just completely packed with people getting last minute snacks and food, and then after that it's just a ghost town and they say, if you like wanted to go to a restaurant on Super Bowl Sunday, you'd be like the only person in there, because everybody is at home watching the game or at someone else's house watching the game.
Speaker 2:And so what would you do in your house? Would you like invite friends over, or would you?
Speaker 3:My uncle usually has a party and he puts bleachers in his living room and yeah, so there's a lot of people and lots and lots of food. Just lots of hot dogs, lots of snacks. I think there's a I was looking at it here avocados there is 13.2 million pounds of avocado eaten every Super Bowl Sunday. Oh, wow, and I think they said that enough chicken wings are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday for the average American to eat four pounds of chicken wings. So there's a lot of birds getting eaten.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I guess a lot of beer also. There's a lot.
Speaker 3:There is a lot of beer. Yes, lots of beer. I don't drink personally, but there's a lot of beer drinking on Super Bowl Sunday.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I suppose the main kind of figure these days is the player Tom Brady.
Speaker 3:Yes, a lot of. There's two types of people in this world those who hate Tom Brady and those who love Tom Brady. So he definitely. Who are you? I like Tom Brady. I used to not like him, but it's the guy's 43 years old. So if I could do half the things he does when he's 43, I'll be very happy, but I do like Tom Brady. There's some other guys like Patrick Mahomes, the guy who lost to Tom Brady, who no one thought that would happen. He's also very popular, does a lot of commercials.
Speaker 2:And so Tom Brady. So he is just a player or just player.
Speaker 3:He's a quarterback, thank you.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. And so when you say he lost to Tom Brady, do you mean like his team or his team.
Speaker 3:Yes, the Patrick Mahomes is the quarterback, and a lot of people say he's the best quarterback in the league and his team was picked to win by a lot versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which Tom Brady was at, and Tom Brady's happened to figure out a way to win again. So yeah.
Speaker 2:So he said yeah, yeah, so he changed. Right, the team changed yes.
Speaker 3:He used to be on the Patriots and now he went down to Tampa Bay and he's now a Buccaneer. So it's pretty incredible. Not a lot of guys in the NFL go and win for two different teams, especially at quarterback. He's only one of two to ever do that. He is starting quarterback and win.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, I also read that he also. He has won the Super Bowl seven times. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yes, so his old team, he played for the Patriots. He won six with them and they have. The Patriots have won more Super Bowls than any other team with six. And well, they're tied with the Steelers. The Steelers and Patriots each have six, and then the Cowboys and 49ers both have five. Well, tom Brady personally has seven, so he has more championships than even any team, which is pretty incredible, yeah.
Speaker 2:So everywhere he goes, they just go and win. Yes so and he also has like a really beautiful wife, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, he's married to some supermodel, so yeah, and she makes more money than he does. She used to, at least yeah, so really yeah.
Speaker 2:It's the Brazilian, yes. Just sell right. Yes I think I don't know, I didn't know this like anyways, and so a huge part of the Super Bowl is and maybe it's one of the things that us foreigners Would watch or know most about is the halftime show. So can you tell us what that is?
Speaker 3:the halftime show. I don't believe they even get paid to play in the halftime show. It's kind of just such a big publicity stunt that they'll do it for free.
Speaker 3:So it's a big concert right, it's a big concert in the middle of the field and Unfourth and it's. I guess they spend a lot of money. I have not watched not watch the halftime show the Super Bowl. Believe it or not, most of me and my friends will all go outside at halftime and play football. Actually, all my friends are always together. We just go outside and throw the football around and play our own football and pretend to be Tom Brady.
Speaker 2:That's so funny, so you don't care really.
Speaker 3:No more of like a lot of. My wife has watched it before and you know a lot of the. The moms don't usually go out and play football so they'll stay and maybe and watch it and tell us if it was good, tell us if it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2:So this is interesting. So everyone kind of in America watches it, like you know. You said that your mom and your wife would watch the game as well, yes. Yeah, yeah. So do they watch any football like throughout the year?
Speaker 3:My wife is probably rare in the fact that she enjoys watching football. Her brother played football and so she just she's grown up always watching it, so she likes it. She's a Chargers fan, so she likes watching it actually. So she watches a little bit throughout the year, but most women probably don't watch it a lot. So my wife, she will watch the Super Bowl though. So, yes, so I, most, most Americans, watch the Super Bowl every year, regardless of gender.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and age and age, yes.
Speaker 3:So you'll have little kids in there watching and it's just something, something to do, it's, it's a. A lot of people have said that it should be a national holiday, but it's not it's. It's the Super Bowl. Just closest thing to a holiday is you can get. That's not a holiday.
Speaker 2:Well, your daughter is two months old, so has she watched this year?
Speaker 3:She was. She was in her little bouncer, kind of watching the best she could. Mom doesn't like her watching TV yet, so oh, I see yeah she might have snuck a couple peaks, you know. Just to say, she watched Tom Brady some day. I who knows he might be playing in 10 more years. The guy's incredible, so.
Speaker 2:That's very true. And so back to the half-time show. So you know, there have been people like Michael Jackson or Beyonce or Lady Gaga or, I don't know, Justin Timberlake performing. So I just I wanted to ask which half-time show was your favorite?
Speaker 3:but you've just said the one that's my favorite. Yeah, I really couldn't tell you. I've watched a lot of the national anthems, but I haven't watched the Super Bowl shows, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And so the national anthems. That's, I suppose, at the beginning of the of the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:It's the beginning of the game and there's huge prop bets on that. Will the national anthem be over two minutes or under two minutes? A lot of people always will bet on that, on how long the national anthem is going to be.
Speaker 2:And that depends on who's on the singer.
Speaker 3:So some singers will sing it really long, some will sing it very short, so I think the shortest is like a minute and 20 seconds, but usually it's over two minutes, I would say, because it's kind of they want their fame of people seeing them sing it.
Speaker 2:So people are already like oh, be quiet, we want to watch the game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so did you have a favorite singer performing the national anthem.
Speaker 3:Favorite singer performing the national anthem this year was Eric Church, and he's a country singer and I would consider myself a country guy, so I enjoyed Eric Church singing it. He did a good job. He's probably not Eric Church, probably isn't as much a world known as maybe Beyonce and Justin.
Speaker 2:Timberlake? Probably not. Yeah, no, yeah.
Speaker 3:Where's the cowboy hat?
Speaker 2:And well, another thing that's quite interesting is that the event is also a huge championship of advertising.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Companies. They pay like highest money to advertise their product during the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:I think it's like $5 million for a 30 second commercial and I might be undershooting that number. It's very expensive.
Speaker 2:So would you agree that you know, watching the commercials is a huge part of the whole experience?
Speaker 3:Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah. There's some that are really funny. That'll make you laugh. There's some that make you scratch your head go. What a waste of money. Why would you even do that? It's, it's, it's, that's a whole nother event. I know a lot of women who watch just for the commercials.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. And so would you just sit with your friends and talk about commercials as they play?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll kind of say that was funny, that wasn't funny, stuff like that there's. There's some very famous ones of the the Budweiser and Heiser Bush Clydesdale horses. Those are very cool and stuff like that. There's some and they actually didn't have one this year. It was like the first time in 20 years or something. But there's definitely some memorable ones that are every the Clydesdale ones. I think those are pretty much only for the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:That's interesting, and so did you have a favorite one.
Speaker 3:My favorite one this year was probably the Jason Alexander who plays George Costanza in Seinfeld. He was on a sweatshirt. It was a tide commercial, and every time the kid did something, the sweatshirt, his face, would change Whereas he sat on it or spilled on it. So I liked that one, and then I liked the Cheetos one.
Speaker 2:And tide, we have to say that's like detergent, right.
Speaker 3:Clothing detergent yeah, my wife puts it in the washing machine to clean the clothes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's very cool. And what did I want to say? What do you think makes these commercials different to kind of like standard commercials you can watch or skip on?
Speaker 3:YouTube. Yeah, I think it used to be a bigger deal like in the 90s, but now they'll actually release the commercials beforehand and put them on YouTube, which kind of defeats the fun for some people. I don't watch them, but I know a lot of people will watch them ahead of time.
Speaker 2:And is it for, like any product you can think of any product, you got cars.
Speaker 3:you have sodas, lots of Coke and Pepsi commercials. Food You'll have your pizza commercials, your grocery store commercials. I would say car commercials are very popular.
Speaker 2:And how often are the breaks for the commercials during the game?
Speaker 3:There's one at the end of every quarter, so there's four quarters, there's one before the halftime show and probably about, I would say, on average, there's a commercial probably every five to 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:And so how long is it? A whole game.
Speaker 3:Of actual playtime, Without commercials and anything. There's only 60 minutes of a game. So you're watching for about three and a half hours to watch just 60 minutes of a game.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's like four quarters, each 15 minutes long.
Speaker 3:Yes, so a team will get the ball, they'll kick it off to the other team and then they will get the ball and then they have four tries to go 10 yards. And if they can make it 10 yards, they keep going until they get the end zone. If they can't make it 10 yards, they punt to the other team and then that will be a commercial break after that.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, I see, and then they go back to the other team with the ball and then they have to go 10 yards. So if a team doesn't get a first down which resets the downs, you get four downs. You get first down, they'll go to a commercial break.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and, but it still is quite aggressive, or isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's very aggressive, yes, Very hard. Hitting can be hard on your body. So if you're too skinny, yeah, but you have to be able to catch the skinny guys too, so there are a good amount of skinny guys playing. The linemen who block for Tom Brady. They're very big. A lot of them are over 280 pounds. Yeah, they're very big.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:So football is the most popular sport in America and I think it's just. It doesn't discriminate towards body types. So you have fat guys playing football, you have skinny guys playing football, you have tall guys, short guys, Whereas if you watch a basketball game, they'll all be. I think the average NBA basketball player is over six feet two inches. Oh god, I'll have to and none of them.
Speaker 2:That would be like two meters or something.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, you guys are on the metric system. I guess we're the weird ones apparently. But basketball you don't see a lot of fat people Baseball you don't see. So it's just, there's all types of body types in football. It's very neat to see.
Speaker 2:But like if you watch Tom Brady, like he looks like a professional athlete.
Speaker 1:He's not fat no he's very ripped and like he looks very perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting, and so why do you think that this is kind of like the event of the year for Americans?
Speaker 3:It's just a fun time to get around with families and friends, and if your team's in it it's even better. But it's just, it's a very good. It's kind of a social holiday where you get to pick who you're hanging out with, if that makes sense. Very good food, very good? Junk food? Usually Definitely not. It's not the type of food Tom Brady would eat. Probably not the food is a very big driving force of that.
Speaker 2:And so you mentioned chicken wings and hot dogs and pizzas. Is that what you would eat?
Speaker 3:I made some tri-tip, which is a it's on a cow, so it's a. It's a type of beef that's actually only in California. A lot of people in America don't even know what that is, but it's kind of like a brisket, sounds good, it's very good yeah.
Speaker 2:Sounds very good. And well, I suppose that this year must have been a little different due to the pandemic, or how was it different to, you know, any other year?
Speaker 3:It wasn't too different, actually, where I, where I, live, we still got together with friends, and in California, we've been in over in lockdown almost a year, and people are kind of just over it, and a lot of people are meeting now and doing stuff. A lot of them aren't too, though, so if if you are worried about that you, those people would stay home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course so, and the game was still being played with audience right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, so where I live is a farming community, so a lot of us never stopped working, actually because that's an essential job. So it didn't. Some of the stores shut down stuff, but thankfully we got to keep working in the profession that I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so are you already super excited about next year's Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:I am excited. So I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. So for the past I don't know 15 years I've been saying this is our year. So yeah, I'm very excited for next year. I, this is your year. Yeah, whenever it's football season, I'm excited. I'm watching TV every Sunday. I'm watching college football on Saturdays. I'm watching my little cousin's play on Friday nights at the local high school. So, yeah, I'm I'm always very excited for football.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's nice to hear. Well, thank you, trent. So much for telling us everything about. Well, maybe not everything we would have to sit here for that would bore you.
Speaker 3:That would bore you quite a bit.
Speaker 2:No, but thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great fun and I hope that people will go and Google Tom Brady oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right. Well, thank you, pavlene, it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode as well, and I hope to see you next week. Bye.