THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 26, 1995 TAG: 9501260377
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Marc Tibbs
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
The year is 2095.
It's time for Super Bowl CXXIX. That's No. 129 for you dumb jocks who don't know Roman numerals.
Got your ticket? Not to worry. Nobody goes to the game anymore.
Just hook up your modem, crack open a brewski and you've got a seat on the 50-yard line.
It could happen.
And it might not take as long as 100 years.
``You can just about do that now,'' said Gary Flaskegaard, a technician for a company that sells access to the Internet, the network that links computer-users worldwide. ``With virtual reality, and the Net, you can do just about anything.''
Imagine: No flights to Miami, no ticket-scalpers, no Al, Dan or Frank. Just you and your hard drive at the Cyberspace Super Bowl.
Oh, some things are still the same.
The endless media hype drones on forever. There still are more sponsors than commercial breaks. And, God knows, they're still playing that insipid Bud Bowl. Who knows what number it is now.
Super Bowl 129 features the America Online Eagles against the Prodigy Panthers. Each team plays while on opposite coasts. Every football game is a home game these days.
Millions upon millions of logged-on ``users,'' via software, hear the national anthem sung. Would-be Whitney Houstons and Kathie Lee Giffords are reduced to the stuff that megamemories are made of.
At halftime, users download pictures from the World Wide Web, dotted with intricate formations like an old-time marching band. Others ``walk'' into Super Bowl ``chat rooms'' where users electronically scream and howl at each other - just like at the neighborhood sports bar.
The Vince Lombardi Trophy would be replaced by the Bill Gates Microchip - a processor coveted by every team in the league.
Like it? I don't.
A Cyberspace Super Bowl might just be the beginning of the end.
Flaskegaard thinks such a spectacle would do more than just let the air out of football. It could ruin society as we know it.
Flaskegaard, who is married to a psychiatric nurse, says: ``She and I talk about it all the time. She only uses computers when she has to. She says that at the rate we're going, the world will soon be filled with a bunch of mindless, isolated idiots.
``Computers are very isolating, and very addictive. People can talk to you, and never have to see you.''
Football without the drunken bums in the bleachers next to you? No tailgate parties outside the stadium?
Just the cool blue haze from a monitor, and all the excitement of a hard drive booting up?
No thanks. Gimme two tickets to Florida, a crowd of screaming lunatics, and Jerry Rice, smiling into the TV cameras, saying, ``I'm going to Disney World.''
Now that's a real Super Bowl. by CNB