This Sunday, America will celebrate its one true national holiday. It’s a day when beer stands tall as the national beverage, when ads connecting strippers to Reeboks finally make sense and when Terry Bradshaw’s head shines like a beacon in the night for all to see. This day, friends, is Super Bowl Sunday-and it may be the most important day in the world. With the amount of recent global turmoil, this could be seen as a grandiose claim, but for 60 minutes on Sunday (stretched into four hours by the good people at Budweiser and Visa), America will come together to watch overpaid gladiators kick each others’ asses. And it will be good.

The Super Bowl is, and probably always will be, America’s defining sporting event. You could make an argument for the World Series, the NBA finals or even the Daytona 500, but do we give any of those events Roman numerals? No. The Super Bowl is a testosterone-filled giant in a sea of ants, and with the utter death of hockey and the continual disappointment of pro hoops, the event on Sunday should act as a defibrillator for a nation that is in desperate need of a distraction.

How important is the Super Bowl to America? Let’s put it this way: last year, CBS estimated that 143.6 million people watched the Panthers and Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII. To contrast that, 121 million people voted in the November Election. If they were smart, they’d figure out some way to combine the two. Everyone gets up at the two minute warning anyway-why not choose a new government while you pour a bowl of Doritos? Plus, in our post-Janet Jackson world, the chances of any of the young’uns catching a sight of anything more disturbing than the Eagles’ defensive line is pretty much zip.

There really will be something for everyone to look for in Jacksonville on Sunday. The sports enthusiasts will watch a battle of a high-powered offense and a brilliant defense. Those who shun athletics will watch for new commercials that cost more than most pension plans and my mom will watch simply because if she doesn’t my dad will start yelling and probably end up breaking the TV. And for those of you who can’t get enough of old guys talking about a game that has passed them by, pre-game coverage has been going straight for about a fortnight now.

The joy of the Super Bowl is that it can bring people together in ways few other things can. No matter what Boston says, there aren’t 143.6 million Eagle and Pat fans in this country. People watch to have a good time, people watch to get closer to their friends and people watch so that they can shamelessly throw back beers at 3:00 p.m. In an age when your floor rises in civil war when someone suggests going to Center Court for dinner, it’s good to know that on Sunday the level of opposition to changing the channel will be so high that you’ll be able to go half a day without touching a remote.

The final match of the FIFA World Cup is consistently the most watched sporting event in the world. But I highly doubt that a big chunk of that number comes from folks in the lower 48. On Sunday afternoon, America will experience the 39th occurrence of its flagship athletic spectacle. Bonds will be shared, beer will be spilled and there will most likely be another stupid E-Trade commercial involving a monkey; but most importantly, there will be football. And it will be good.

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