What Time is the Super Bowl Kickoff?

Why is it so difficult to find precise information on when the Super Bowl will kick off? Why do millions of NFL fans who would like to skip the pregame shows and hype and settle in just for football have to search all over the place to find out the answer to what should be a simple question?

Search on the internet in the hours leading up to the game for 'Super Bowl kickoff' and you won't be able to find a definitive answer to the question you want answered.

The irony is that just about everything connected to the Super Bowl is covered and re-covered and over-covered. We know more about both teams than we care to, and we will know more about the Super Bowl ads than we need to. But we do not know when the Super Bowl will actually kick off. Imagine a World Series game for which we don't know the time of the first pitch. Imagine an NBA Championship for which we do not know the time of the tipoff.

While we may not know the time of the Super Bowl kickoff, we do know some things about the Super Bowl.

We know that the Super Bowl broadcast begins at 6:00 pm EST. We know that preceding the Super Bowl, Bill O'Reilly, coincidentally enough from Fox News, will be interviewing President Barack Obama. We know that the Black Eyed Peas will be performing at halftime (a marked improvement, I think most would agree, over last year's dinosaur halftime act, The Who).

But nobody, nowhere, seems to really be able to answer the question of what time the Super Bowl kickoff actually is.

Could it be, ladies and gentlemen of the United States, that the league and its network partners do not want you to know what time the Super Bowl kickoff is? Could it be that the league and its network partners want you to tune in, breathlessly, hoping ot not miss a second of the big game as you watch mostly advertisements?

The Super Bowl, along with the Academy Awards and American Idol, is one of the last national campfires. It is one of the very few opportunities that advertisers have to really reach the entire nation. Every minute, indeed every second, of every Super Bowl broadcast, whether it be during the game itself or during the pre-game, is worth its virtual weight in gold.

The National Football League and the Fox Network does not really want you to know when the Super Bowl kickoff is; they want you watching the Super Bowl broadcast for as long as possible. When the Super Bowl kickoff is does not really matter all that much...at least to them.

For the reader, I will say that the likely kickoff time for the Super Bowl is about 6:25 pm est. That is based largely on past Super Bowl kickoff times and is subject to change.

http://www.chiff.com/recreation/sports/super-bowl.htm