SPECTACLE WATCH : Civil War

If there is any metaphorical or symbolic value to a Super Bowl--that is to say, if this thoroughly hyped sports event is anything other than an overblown game starring over-aged kids and watched by millions of over-aged adolescents (and some real ones)--it showed up Sunday in Miami as the North battled the South.

For this was the first all-California Super Bowl and Los Angeles was not invited; it was strictly a San Francisco-San Diego affair--the two extremes of the state going at it before all the world.

California’s North-South rivalry is well-known, of course. The North accuses the South of stealing its water and the South accuses the North of provincialism. The two fight it out in Sacramento, where the politicians inevitably do their thing. They compromise.

The most recent compromise was perhaps the best of all--settling on a water formula for the Sacramento River Delta that could prove beneficial both upstate and down for decades. Politicians are not much in vogue these days but it was they--including Mayor Richard Riordan, Gov. Pete Wilson, the state legislators and the water officials--who achieved the near-impossible: an agreement that appears to balance ecological needs with water-supply thirsts.

In a sense, that game--the Super Bowl water game that took years to play--ended in a tie. Perhaps only in the game of politics, all sides win when there are ties. That was the case with the water Super Bowl.

Not so on Sunday of course. One side or the other had to score more points. That’s football, that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the game. (Who was it that won again ?)