Trying to find answers in Kobe Bryant’s death

We were walking Sunday, and heard a band, kind of bluesy, playing in the patio behind a bar. Across from the band was an upstairs outdoor patio, and we listened from there. As we waited for our drinks, we heard the same conversation on both sides of us. The subject was a helicopter crash.

We didn’t know the details. But for the crash to be part of two unrelated conversations it likely featured a public figure, so there was a sense of dread. We didn’t bring our phones, and even if we had were in no rush to read the bad news. Within minutes there came a scroll across the bottom of a TV screen. Kobe Bryant had been killed outside Los Angeles in a helicopter crash.

I didn’t know Kobe. I talked to him several times, but always in the context of a group interview.

We quickly finished our drinks and left. This one hurt.

Kobe was only 41 and when a young man or young woman dies there’s always pain. But this one especially hurt. Kobe was only a year older than my older son, and my son has one daughter to Kobe’s four, although Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, also died in the crash.

Seven other people died when the helicopter hit the ground, suddenly gone. Kobe gets the attention because we felt as if we knew him. We’d watched him play 20 years for the NBA’s marquee team, the Los Angeles Lakers. He was a spectacular player, flashy and fun and remarkably driven. If an opponent had a weakness, he’d find it. And if an opponent didn’t have a weakness, he’d create one.

Kobe was in only his fourth season of life after basketball, and we have no idea what he would become, although we all believed he’d become something. He just seemed like that kind of guy.

When there’s a tragedy such as Sunday morning’s, in which nine lives end, we try to make peace with it. But there’s no peace with this one. Families have been devastated, the outpouring of grief seemingly endless.

Some of us turn to religion in the wake of such a tragedy. Whether we do or don’t, we also turn to the people we love and let them know we feel.

We look for an answer. There is no answer.

Super Bowl week is excessive, and that’s OK

I always believed that the two-week break between the conference championships and Super Bowl was a mistake. I like the rhythm of weekly football, albeit with one bye per team per season. Then I went to the Super Bowl, and realized the extra week is essential. There are parties to set up, hotel rooms for the competing teams to book, and more parties to set up.

I went to 10 Super Bowls, the first of them and the last of them in Miami, where Sunday’s game is At first I loved the attendant festivities. Even media day was fun.

On media day, women who look like models and dress as if they are going to a South Beach club ask provocative non-football questions. Former NFL players who wear loud suits and talk in loud voices compete with each other for attention. But some players sit alone. I usually talked to them for a few minutes.

The most opulent place I have ever been is Vatican City. The Super Bowl is second. There are parties you won’t get into unless you know somebody. There are also parties you pay to get into. Celebrities sponsor them, and VIP guests, who pay a lot more than the other guests, get to mingle with the sponsors. It’s as if the VIP fans fly first class, everybody else flies coach.

I’ve been to some of the parties. At one, three models stood at the front of the room, two women and a man, and guests lined up to paint them with, presumably, removable paint. My older son and a friend went to the party, but not the game. By the time we left, they were on a first name basis with the women models.

The primary media hotel swells, the lobby no longer big enough to contain fans that want to see players who aren’t in the game, as well as the stars of music and big and small screens that some of the radio shows attract.

Ticket-sellers compete with each other. The prices they collect can be absurd. I asked one such ticket seller, a friend, where he gets his tickets. Mostly, he said, from players.

A ticket this season, says the friend, ranges from $4,200 in the upper deck to $9,000 for a prime seat. Like the betting line, prices fluctuate, and can drop markedly by the end of the week. I asked him who plays $18,000 for two tickets.

His answer makes sense. If you run a business in, say, Kansas City, and want to show your clients how deeply you care about them, two Super Bowl tickets are an investment. The happy clients ought to care deeply about you and your business for a long time.

Many fans at the Super Bowl have little interest in the game. A woman I know sat next to one such fan at the Super Bowl in Atlanta, a city that should never host the game. The man played with his phone, didn’t boo and didn’t cheer, and reacted with all the passion of a patient in a dentist’s waiting room.

The woman finally asked the guy why he had come. His company wanted him to, he said. He had not seen a game live for years, and rarely watched on TV.

Would love to have seen a real fan take the man’s place. But the game isn’t about real fans, unless the real fans can afford a ticket. That’s unfortunate, because every fan should get an opportunity to go once.

Build a new stadium and the NFL usually will reward you with a Super Bowl. But if I ran the league, I’d stay south. The best Super Bowl I attended was in San Diego. That’s not going to happen since the city lacks a team. New Orleans is a great and experienced host. Miami is good. Los Angeles can be. Tampa is OK. Jacksonville was over-matched, but it was as if the entire city went to obedience school, and everybody tried to be nice.

Despite the excess, the Super Bowl works. The NCAA attempted to copy it this season when Louisiana State and Clemson played for the College Football Playoff national championship. But the excess detracted rather than enhanced the game.

There’s a petition to move the 2021 Super Bowl, which will be played in Tampa, from Sunday to Saturday. The idea is that fans will have a day to unwind before they return to work or school.

I don’t sign petitions, but would especially avoid this one. How about: Play the game on Sunday and make the Monday after the Super Bowl a holiday. But wait. Who believes we already have too many holidays?

Thought so. I don’t, either.

And the Super Bowl pick is ...

The NFL’s two best teams will play in Super Bowl 54, and the Super Bowl does not always get such a matchup, as fans of the New Orleans Saints will forever attest. The Saints should have made it last season.

Befitting what should be a close game, the Kansas City Chiefs have been favored since odds were posted -- by one point now and at one time 1½.

The over-under began at 52½, but is up to 54½, which is interesting because both teams have good defenses.

Last week I picked both conference championships correctly, and after a horrendous playoff start, have accurately picked four in a row.

I love the Chiefs, love quarterback Patrick Mahomes, love head coach Andy Reid and very much like the city of Kansas City. The Chiefs’ offense is designed for our time, an offense that features an enormously talented quarterback who can move and hit receivers in ways he seems to have invented.

But I think the San Francisco 49ers win. The 49ers went 13-3 in a conference superior to Kansas City’s, and demolished the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers in the playoffs.

San Francisco’s pass rush is the best in football, as is its running game. The offensive line is superb and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is as good as he needs to be.

So, good matchup and good game.

San Francisco 31, Kansas City 27.