1951: Super Bowl Watch Party

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Super Bowl Watch Party

Title text: It's going to be weird near the end of May when the screen goes blank for over 18 hours.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a FOOTBALL - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football. In late January or early February each year, the winner of the American Football Conference (AFC) plays the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) to determine the champion. In Super Bowl LII held on Sunday, February 4, (the day before this comic's release), the NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles defeated the AFC champion New England Patriots. Based on its wide-reaching cultural impact, Super Bowl is, in the United States, widely considered the single most important game of the year (of any sport^{[citation needed]}), and over a hundred million people (across the world) watch it, many of whom are not even fans of American football.

Many people have parties centered on watching the game. The full game lasts around four hours, including breaks for advertisements and a halftime, which includes a live performance of music.

Cueball and Megan (on the couch) have such a Super Bowl Watch Party going with their friends (hence the title), but in order to watch the game so that the end will be at the start of the next game, they have slowed down the broadcast so the game takes an entire year to watch. The normal TV is broadcast at 30 frames per second and takes four hours. But by slowing the video down by a factor of 2300, the show would last a full year. (Actually it would last 33.120.000 seconds which is 383 days, 18 days more than a year. To make it last a year, minus 4 hours, it should be slowed down a factor 2189). Each frame would be shown for about 76.7 seconds. Each day in the slow video would cover just under 40 seconds of real time. With this method of viewing, the watchers are instead reduced to analyzing the game frame-by-frame, which may make it easier to understand the sequence of events, but also creates a feeling of tedium.

Due to this extension creating a lack of variety, Megan tries to make it interesting by guessing the next frame shown will be a cut to a different camera angle. Cuts happen frequently during the broadcast, especially when the ball is not in play, and these cuts may be marked by a black screen. If this is the case, then the cut will be around a minute of nothing to look at at this speed. Megan has a relatively high probability (albeit still incredibly low, with cuts being less than one in every 1000 frames) of being right simply by chance that the next frame will be a cut, but Cueball's tired comment that she always guesses that indicates that the game is so slow or the cuts are so rare that she is almost never correct.

Ponytail asks if they think the first ad block will come out before the end of February, about 20 days after the start of the Super Bowl show. The ads and halftime show are considered integral parts of the broadcast, and many advertisers debut elaborate commercials especially for this game, since so many people watch it. Many people claim to watch the Super Bowl only for the commercial breaks, as mentioned in 60: Super Bowl, and the anticipation for these is exaggerated for this game, as the wait is much longer with the extended broadcast. (In exchange, however, the commercials will be longer, too.)

The title text refers to how, during a commercial break during the 2018 Super Bowl, only blackness was broadcast for 28 seconds. At the rate they watch it would last almost 18 hours as described (17 hours 53 minutes).

In previous comics regarding the Super Bowl, Randall has explained that he now watches the Super Bowl (1480: Super Bowl), despite previously expressing a lack of interest in the game (60: Super Bowl) or any other sport (1107: Sports Cheat Sheet). A slowly updating video is similar to the concept behind 1190: Time, and is also reminiscent of Douglas Gordon's 1993 art installation 24 Hour Psycho. Also, As Slow as Possible is an organ piece that is currently played in a German church - it will end in 2640, after 639 years of continuous playing. The theme of a group becoming interested in frame-by-frame shots is reminiscent of 915: Connoisseur.

Transcript

[A woman, looking like Megan, walks up to a group of people watching TV. Cueball and Megan (with shorter hair than the walking woman) are sitting on a couch. A Cueball-like guy sits in front of them, while Ponytail lies on the ground, head resting on a hand, in front of a TV, which is quite far from the couch.]

Woman: Morning. How's the game?

Cueball: Eagles got to the 26-yard line around midnight. They've been walking across the field since then. Just entered a huddle.

Megan: I bet the next frame will be a cut.

Guy on floor: You always say that.

Ponytail: Do you think the first ads will come by the end of February?

[Caption below the comic:]

I'm at a year-round Super Bowl watch party. We're playing the stream at ¹/_2300x speed, so it will end just as next year's Super Bowl starts.

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Discussion

Which one is Megan? The description refers to Megan coming in but also Megan predicting the cut, but the comic clearly shows two different people.L 172.68.58.17 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There is not way of telling who is who as Megan is not a name used for the generic woman with long black hair used by Randall. But in the context of this explanation side, then Cueball and Megan are together so the pair on the couch are Cueball and Megan for the comic explanations sake. The Woman walking in doesn't have long enough hair to be Danish and also Black Hat is missing, so this in another of the very few cases with more than one Megan (see her page, there are now five as opposed to the more than 170 comics with Multiple Cueballs). I have corrected the transcript to make this distinction. The Guy on the floor is the Multiple Cueball ;-) --Kynde (talk) 10:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

soooo 17776 but on the viewer’s end 172.68.142.41 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Now I want to see this! Could someone set up an Internet livestream? (For some definitions of “live” anyway) ;) PotatoGod (talk) 22:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Working on it ;)

EDIT: Done, check it out! https://yearlongsuperbowl.com/ Okofish (talk) 00:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Love it!! 162.158.114.82 08:41, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

This is an excellent addition to my tab collection, thankyou, enjoying this far more than I should... 108.162.249.4 04:01, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

What gluttons for punishment. Professional sports games with all that commentary, colour, etc. is long as it is. 108.162.216.220 06:19, 6 February 2018 (UTC) Gene [email protected]

29.97 fps is only normal in the Americas; most of the rest of the world uses 25 fps. --141.101.98.124 10:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I am a Singaporean here and is there anyway that I can watch the matches through a legal website? I want to get into the fad of the season.Boeing-787lover 15:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC) -- Xkcdreader52 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

For future reference, here is an article on how and when you could have watched the 2018 SuperBowl live in Singapore: Where to Watch the Super Bowl in Singapore (cached) These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 00:52, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

The bit about four hours, and by extension, his math being wrong is... Wrong. Games last that on average. A slowdown by a factor of 2300 would suggest the game lasted just over 3 hours, 48 minutes and 31 seconds. Assuming 525600 minutes in a year. 172.69.22.50 06:34, 7 February 2018 (UTC)lordloki