In Which We Sadly Wish We Could Be in the ‘90s

By Will Leitch
(Editor’s note: Deadspin.com’s Will Leitch will be in Arizona through Super Bowl Sunday, writing exclusive columns for Sporting News.)
This week, I’ve tried with varying levels of success to find people who aren’t a fan of either competing team who are excited about the game Sunday. They’re not easy to locate. Frankly, my general sense is that everyone thinks the Patriots are going to blow away the Giants, but out of issues of politeness and keeping the interest level high, everyone’s pointing to that Week 17 matchup, as if this will be a carbon copy of that game. I think the Patriots are going to kill the Giants, and I suspect almost everyone here in Phoenix secretly agrees with me.
This game reminds me partly of Super Bowl 33, when everyone spent two weeks trying to talk themselves into believing the Falcons had a legitimate chance against the Broncos. They didn’t, and they were hammered. But it really reminds me of the Super Bowls of the early ‘90s, when one clearly dominant team (49ers, Redskins, Cowboys, Cowboys, 49ers, Cowboys, Packers) dominated one clearly inferior team (Broncos, Bills, Bills, Bills, Chargers, Steelers, Patriots). There was a stretch in which we always assumed the Super Bowl would not be competitive, and it was not. We’ve been spoiled in recent years, with the Patriots-Rams classics, but the Super Bowl used to always stink. Particularly in the early ‘90s.
I miss the ‘90s. Specifically, the early ‘90s. The ‘90s marked that brief, fleeting time in my life when everything that came natural to me suddenly, in an insane snapshot, became cool. It’s difficult to imagine now. Wearing beaten up flannel sweatshirts, not showering and wearing your hair down in your face was, in the early ‘90s, what you were supposed to look like. People tried to look that way. The goal was to look as if you did not care; in doing this, you were somehow considered authentic. This worked out perfectly for me, because I totally, with 100 percent authenticity, didn’t care how I looked. At all. However quickly the fad might have passed, this was the style. Considering this has pretty much always been my style, I loved it (and frankly, I’m still biding my time for it to return).
In “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas,” Hunter S. Thompson, lamenting that wistful moment when it became clear all the hope of the ‘60s cultural revolution was going to stumble ungallantly into the sweaty shtick storm that was the ‘70s, wrote, “Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” It is indicative of my generation’s overarching apathy and self-regard -- or perhaps just mine -- that Thompson’s statement reminds me of when Kurt Cobain killed himself. Though, in our case, what we lost was not an upending of social mores but instead our ability to wear floppy hair, ripped jeans and stupid-looking lumberjack button-ups and be considered cool for it. It might not be much, but, you know, it was a time of general peace and prosperity: It’s all we had.
Do not, however, mention the early ‘90s to a woman, particularly a woman who attended college at any point before 1997. As one of my fellow 32-year-old friends put it, “The one time in my life when I had a decent body happened to be the exact time when the style was to hide your figure under schlumpy, oversized sweaters. It sucks; every picture I have from college, I look like Tori Amos.” Hey, tell me about it, lady; I saw.
Anyway, over the last 10-plus years, not much about me has changed at all. I still listen to the same music -- not a day goes by that “Nevermind” isn’t played at least once in my iPod -- and everything I learned to love in the early ‘90s (Woody Allen movies, typing words really fast as a conceivable career option, girls) I still love today. I suspect many of you feel the same way, minus the Woody Allen part.
If Sunday turns out to be a blowout, don’t think of it as time wasted. Think of it as ‘90s nostalgia. With the lights out ... it’s less dangerous ...↵