What makes the Super Bowl super?

Reason No. 4: Injuries! Pain! Violence!

If football really is the bread and circuses of this dying empire, the injuries suffered by the gladiators make the game more real, more urgent. And their willingness to take the risks absolves us from blame. After all, they volunteered.

There is no question that violence stirs fans’ blood. Football players know this; they have been remarkably hostile to attempts to soften the mayhem, especially those ringing helmet-to-helmet shots, an offspring of the modern technique learned in PeeWee leagues of “putting a hat on him” (which means tackling headfirst rather than the more traditional style of wrapping one’s arms around the ball carrier’s legs and dragging him down).

For those of us watching on TV, the collisions seem almost like cartoon hits. How can those players just pop back up? Is it the pride, the adrenaline, that allows them to pretend they are made of steel? Of course, the real damage — the dementia brought on by head trauma — is years, even decades, away.