I’m a big proponent of the belief that if we want young people to read, we’ve got to let them read what they want.

We can’t hand them a pile of the so-called classics and tell them, “Here, pore through these.” They won’t do it, and they’ll hate reading – perhaps for good.

And that’s a shame, because reading is one of the essentials to succeeding in life. The better you read, the more chance you have to make it.

It’s just that simple.

So, then, to be good at life, you have to be a good reader, and like anything else, to be good at reading, you have to practice it. But practice is an acquired taste. It can become tedious and boring. You have to want to do it, to get better. That’s not easy, and the best way to fuel that desire is to bring it into focus at a level young people can see, understand and enjoy.

For example, if a kid likes superheroes, then give him enough comic books to choke an elephant.

If a kid likes cars, then present him copies of the magazine, Popular Mechanics.

If a kid likes sports, get him a subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids, or, if he’s older, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine or whatever.

In whatever subject area the kid likes, give him enough cool reading material as he’ll take. And kids are selfish, so they’ll take a lot.

If it eventually leads him to the Huck Finn, then great. But if not, then so be it.

It’s more important that he develop a love for reading than he appreciates the writings of Mark Twain. If you sour him on reading, then the only thing he’ll ever read is stuff like, “R u 2 cool 4 school?”

I’m no educator, but I know it works because I’ve seen it work every time it’s tried.

It worked for me, who, then as now, was as stubborn as an old mule and didn’t like to be told anything. So instead of ordering me to read the things I didn’t want to read, and wouldn’t read, no matter how much they would have threatened me and badgered me, they were smart and let me follow my heart. And in doing so, they gently massaged me into becoming not just a good reader, but a voracious one as well. And I still am to this day.

My literary choices were the sports section of the newspaper, sports magazines, sports books, comic books and MAD Magazine.

My mother, God rest her soul, fueled my hunger for the printed word by dutifully buying me whatever I liked – with one exception. She gritted her teeth and had to be convinced to purchase MAD.

That the ugly, gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman was on the cover all the time troubled a woman who had grown up on a farm in the middle of nowhere in the early part of the last century. He looked like some kind of social deviant.

And she couldn’t understand why I thought MAD’s content, with a theme of satire, was so funny. In her mind, reading was not supposed to be humorous. Milton Berle was humorous. Alfred E. Neuman was scary.

She would be shocked now to know that MAD was, at least in one respect, able to see into the future. Yes, MAD was way ahead of its time.

Honest.

Being a real sports fan, I read with great delight a parody story in an edition in the late 1960s about pro football, especially the Super Bowl, as the MAD writers saw it down the road. They could visualize where this newly-named Super Bowl, which heretofore had been known for its first several years of existence as simply the NFL-AFL World Championship Game, was headed. They thought the growth of the Super Bowl, and of pro football in general right along with it, was going to be meteoric.

In the story, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle got into a discussion with a young sportscaster calling games on CBS, Frank Gifford, who was then much more recognized as having been a great halfback/flanker for the New York Giants. Rozelle talked about a plan for every team to make the playoffs. The top teams would meet in the Super Bowl, the second-place clubs in the next-best bowl, the third-place teams in the third-best bowl and so on and so forth right on down the line until the last-place clubs squared off in the Booby Bowl, as in booby prize.

In this story, the Super Bowl was way more than just a football game. It was an event – a national holiday — in which everybody, no matter if they thought a quarterback meant getting 25 cents in change, celebrated together with parties as they sat and watched the big game. It was like New Year’s Eve a couple weeks after the fact.

There was one panel in the comic book-like story – that’s also why I liked it – in which shoppers were depicted walking in and out of stores and shops in a downtown adorned in lights and décor as if it were Christmastime. There was a banner strung across the street from one side to another proclaiming, “Only 5 Shopping Days Left ’Till Super Bowl Sunday.”

The humor was that it was all so outlandish. Parties held to watch a football game? A holiday observed by just about the entire country? An expanded playoff format big enough to drag out the postseason for a whole month?

Come on. That wasn’t going to happen – ever.

But it has.

We know that now as Super Bowl 50 between the Denver Broncos, an old AFL team that was struggling mightily back in the late 1960s, and the Carolina Panthers, who weren’t even a glimmer in any football fan’s eye, gets ready to kick off tonight. It will be played in a still-new stadium with all the bells and whistles in the San Francisco area that is the grandchild of old, simplistic Kezar Stadium, where the 49ers were playing back then.

That first Super Bowl – er, NFL-AFL World Championship Game – l between the NFL champion Green Bay Packers and AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs was played Jan. 15, 1967 in warm, sunny conditions at a Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that was far from being sold out. As expected, the Packers won, 35-10, giving proof to what everyone already knew in that the NFL was stronger.

But there was much more to it that. CBS, which had the rights to NFL games, and NBC, which broadcast AFL games, both aired the contest using the same cameras. In our area, that meant basically the same picture on the screen on channels 8 and 3 for nearly three hours straight.

And in the press box, there were fights between sportswriters of the NFL and AFL who were standing up for the worth of the leagues they covered. It was more or less in the realm of two boys saying to each other, “My dad is better than your dad!”, and then setting out to prove it with their fists.

Imagine that, people other than the players fighting at a football game. Who could have seen that coming?

In one final glimpse into the future, both networks held pre-game shows that lasted for hours, with star players from both leagues and broadcasters discussing anything and everything about the game. By kickoff, bleary-eyed viewers, who were still years off from being inundated by sports talk shows, were praying for the game to begin so these guys would stop their incessant yapping.

And I read about it first in that bastion of progressive thinking, MAD Magazine, nearly a half-century ago.

Thanks, Mom.