A Super Bowl Preview for People Who Don’t Know Football

Once a year, a lot of people are forced to pretend to care about football.

Some friend or partner with them drag them to a Super Bowl party, and although it may be worth it just to experience the expensive commercials, unhealthy eating, excess alcohol, the hilariously stupid halftime show, the Puppy Bowl or drunk people wear unattractive props, many people would rather spend three hours passing a stone than watching the actual game.

It's no wonder. Soccer lacks the artful, accessible flow of football or basketball, it's an inscrutable sport of course, hampered by sharp short game action comic (s according to the Wall Street Journal, only about 11 minutes of actual football is played during a football game, while a full 67 minutes airtime spent on the players stand around). The constant stoppages, mysterious and baffling terminology penalties (eg, "without prejudice to the quarterback") make this game one pain in the ass to watch for anyone who has not been taking for years.

This years focus on the game because of the players. These guys have stories.

Sure, there's Pittsburgh defensive end Brett Keisel, whose huge beard has its own Facebook page and Twitter feed, and Green Bay defensive back Jarrett Bush, who is proficient at drums, tuba and trombone's in addition to being a crack snowboarder. In this game, but the marquee players that will surprise you.

Troy Polamalu is a safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers. You may know him from his Head & Shoulders commercials, starring his long black curls that he has not cut in eight years. Yes, he was addressed by her, and yes, it hurts. He plays defense, however, so he is usually the one doing the approach, which is beautiful to watch, because Troy is to address what Iggy Pop's stage antics. He is the lightning and butter and crack pipes on fire.

If not beating the shit out of people, Troy is an on-the-ground advocate for the homeless of Pittsburgh. A while back, the G20 summit held there, and city leaders wanted the space for visitors to decorate fancy-ass. They had this clever idea to shake the homeless from sensitive locations such as the 9th Street bridge, by telling the charities and services in the area not to help them as usual. It takes the city hoped that the huddled masses move out on their own so that their PR department can avoid an ugly Bonus March-style smoke-out.

Troy found out about this and began to regularly drive to the 9th street bridge, distributing food, clothing and money. Few people joined him and there was very little attention paid to this, but he probably has more to simultaneously fly in the face of the G20 and in fact people than one hundred fly-by-night anarchists do in a life help.

Troy is also an advocate for land of his ancestors from Samoa, has helped with hurricane island rescue and arranged for several hundred thousand dollars worth of football equipment, enough for a whole generation of children, which will be donated to the schools of this country .

During the game, watching Troy when he darts around, trying to Aaron Rodgers into thinking he is after him. Sometimes he will be. Your back will hurt just watching.

Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, has stored on each line of "The Princess Bride." The fact that he can quote Miracle Max on cue makes it probably my fourth favorite football player ever, but this guy is as surprising from the field.

Never reluctant to hype a couple of weeks, when Aaron was caught on camera, apparently seeking an autograph snubbing cancer. The cancer itself did not mind - he signed a ton of stuff for her already, in fact, the main cause of Aaron the MACC (Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer) which he has won and raised a lot of money. He also took a hundred children from the Boys & Girls Club on a surprise getaway this Christmas with fifteen other Green Bay Packer players and gave each child $ 100 to buy presents for their families.

Aaron is from Chico, California and played college ball close to fantastic home at UC Berkeley. In the days preceding the 2005 NFL Draft, NFL teams where the players they want out of the college teams, he was conceived with a man named Alex Smith, one of the top two quarterbacks in the country.

However, nobody wanted him. Team after team picked other guys and passed through Aaron. Imagine waiting to be picked for dodgeball in gym class and every person I've picked before, you lost millions of dollars. That's what Aaron went through. Alex Smith was picked first overall and received a six-year deal for $ 49,500,000. Aaron ran down to 24, and was one seventh of that. And when he entered the NFL he has to wait behind a guy named Brett Favre for three years, while constantly Brett retired and the UN pension. Aaron did not complain about any of this. He waited his turn.

Now he's in the fucking Super Bowl for the first time, facing Troy Polamalu Pittsburgh and a frontline that great beard Brett Keisel's, features a 300-lb. man named Ziggy, and a fellow named James Harrison, who, even after the NFL issuing fines started for tackles that could concussion effects, has said he does not care how much he was fined and he's already a fine of a lot-he does hurt people. James Harrison has knocked people out of games, and because Aaron Rodgers is the main man on the Green Bay Packers, Aaron he will try to knock out the Super Bowl as soon as possible.

For three hours, Aaron will have to look at the line of scrimmage for James Harrison to 60 times, Gunning full steam for his face, his head, his career. Have fun storming the castle.

Hines Ward is a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. You'll notice him because he always seems to smile even when he addressed. The joy of this man gets adrenaline and violence is so pure and powerful that if football did not exist, we should invent Hines Ward avoid breaking into zoos polar bears and bite in half.

Born in South Korea to a Korean mother and an African-American father, Ward was one of the few players of Asian descent in the NFL, and is also an active advocate and spokesman for bi-racial youth in South Korea. He donated $ 1 million to the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation to make to help children of mixed race to overcome the discrimination they often experience in that country.

On the field, he is less sensitive. NFL players have voted twice Hines Ward to the dirtiest player in the league. He has been fined for excessive hits. In October 2008 he hit Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Keith Rivers so hard he broke Rivers' jaw. Not surprisingly, like Ward downfield for his fellow receivers to block as much as he likes to catch the ball, and he considered the best in the game on its bold and glamorous duty.

When a Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward other than the ball, look for the number of Hines, 86 catches, and pay attention. It is at that moment, the most violent and televised live thing in the world.

Although some different, we can not ignore Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. While he was one of the best signal-callers in the game for the fans, he goes to the black hat white hat on Aaron Rodgers' this year. Ben is off the field, almost anything a bad name to professional athletes.

In 2006 he joined a motorcycle accident without a helmet. He apparently was thrown over the wheel of his Suzuki Hayabusa and shattered a car windshield with his head. He has no valid license at the time, and later lied about the nature of the motorcycle he was driving and other circumstances of the accident.

The effects of severe cranial trauma can not fully explain away the civil suit that was filed against Ben in July 2009 for sexually assaulting a hotel clerk in Lake Tahoe, or the alleged assault of a 20-year-old student in March 2010. After the second offense, the NFL finally decided to slap on the wrist phone and give him a six-game suspension, which was reduced to four, after a meeting with the commissioner and agreed to enter counseling.

Despite missing the first four games this season, he helped the Pittsburgh Steelers to their seventh Super Bowl. The TV will not sign "Ben Rapelisberger," but she'll be in the crowd, as will be legions of Steeler fans, some of whom love him unconditionally and some of whom have long ago switched to wearing sweaters Ward and Polamalu while waving their terrible towels. For a Steeler fan, voting a straight party line is no longer necessary.

Conversely, the story of Donald DRIVER, wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers is one of the most impressive in all sports. Growing up in extreme poverty in Houston, Texas, Donald, his mother and brother lived at different times, in a U-Haul, from a car, and on the streets.

As a young teenager, Donald used his intelligence, natural agility and quick hands to become a highly effective car thief. He sold the cars to drugs, then he turned around and sold for more money now.

He believes he is playing to thirty cars, and was caught only once. He had outrun the police, but this time he hit the car of an old woman as she was backing out of her driveway. He burst out of the car and sprinted away, but after a few blocks he stopped and ran back to the old woman to make sure she was okay.

She was all right, but his concern for this old woman, whom he had never seen before, cost him his lead in the police. The old woman heard them coming and told Donald to sit on her porch.

Moments later, when police arrived, she said the man who hit her car had run off, and when she asked about the boy on her porch, she told them it was her grandson. When the police leave, she ordered Donald in her house and gave him talking to his life.

The message he got from the old woman, a young man with his skills and heart could do so much more, got through to him. Within one year was Donald started playing football and live with his grandmother to attend a school with a strong program. He went to play at Alcorn State in Mississippi in 1999 and was drafted into the final round of the draft by the Green Bay Packers. Because of his low draft status, he was signed for a pittance by NFL standards, and had virtually no chance the team. The Green Bay Packers for seven other people who could play receiver on their roster. Many teams have five total.

The Packers drafted Dee Miller, a hotshot receiver from Ohio State, a much bigger school, ahead of Donald in the draft that year. Donald Miller, and Dee would have a few veterans next beat, just to wear an NFL uniform for more than one month of his life.

Eleven years later, Donald the Green Bay Packers all-time leader in receptions. He is one of the most benevolent active athletes in any sport, do most of his work with Goodwill and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Donald Driver Foundation has been directly put homeless families in furnished homes and hospital bills paid for children of poor parents.

Donald is 35 years old now, and this may be the last match of his life. The Steelers can win, and the end of his rags-to-riches journey with a loss, and that's how football works. Still, if you see him lift his hands, catch the ball, and enter the end zone, know that this man here is the result of something he once ran back to.