Long before the Super Bowl we know, there was a great annual sporting event of which our Super Bowl is just the faintest echo.
Archeologists have discovered the remains of the original three-sided field where they played for the hai-baba-rebab championship of the entire Wadja-Noh civilization. As this encompassed all the lands and cities between the Oxus and the Amu Darya rivers, in the vast reaches of central Asia, you can imagine the title game was a major event.
Scholars have not yet deciphered all the rules of the game, but we know enough to say it was very similar to football: except that instead of an air-inflated football, a 35-pound granite cube was used. This militated against punt plays; but a successful field goal meant an instant, automatic victory.
In those barbaric days, the losing team was beheaded and the heads auctioned off to the fans. These were collectible.
The recently-translated Epic of Hai de Ho, Big Man of Touchdowns tells us that the championship game was called the Ho Khum, and was preceded, and frequently interrupted, by short dramas of a religious nature. These often attracted more attention than the game itself. There were also contests among the fans to see who could perform the most prodigious acts of gluttony while watching the game–which usually took up 12 hours, or even more. The epic claims that Hai’s number one fan, Tubbo Gutz, finally burst open and died as a result of overeating.
When the Proto-Sumerians conquered Wadja-Noh, circa 7,000 B.C., they abolished the game of hai-babba-rebab in favor of gladiatorial combats, which they said were much nicer and more conducive to the progress of civilization. The final championship game was played between the cities of Ay-dunno and Ay-dunkayr, to a scoreless tie whose monotony was alleviated by several choking deaths among the fans and a memorable series of religious playlets during the game.
These little shreds of information are all that remain of a once-great nation.