[Ads-l] "better than sex" (food, etc.)

[Laurence Horn]

Two decades after these sports-related cites, I thought I remembered Bill
Belichick (then the Giants' defensive coordinator) commenting that winning
the Super Bowl was better than sex. But apparently the attribution is
apocryphal.  I now read the following from our AI masters (although I'm not
sure how much reliance to place on an intelligence, artificial or
otherwise, that refers to the "Giants' dynasty"):

Neither Bill Belichick nor any player under his tenure has said that a
Super Bowl win was "better than sex"
. The comment is commonly misattributed and stems from several different
sources:

   - A New York Giants player, possibly Jim Burt, made the remark following
   the team's Super Bowl XXI victory in 1987. A 2011 ESPN column referenced
   the comment in the context of the Giants' dynasty but mistakenly attributed
   it to Belichick.


On Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 6:56 PM Ben Zimmer <
00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> Spoiler for the Saturday 10/25/25 New York Times crossword... From Byron
> Walden's constructor notes in the NYT Wordplay column:
>
> ---
> https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2025-10-25.html
> 16-Down [BETTER THAN SEX, clued as "Especially gratifying, so to speak"] is
> older than I would have guessed. It apparently first gained currency in the
> language in descriptions of food. (Paging Ben Zimmer for confirmation.) The
> cake with that name was popular in the 1970s. The crossword immortal Alan
> Alda’s character Hawkeye used it to describe his favorite Chicago ribs in a
> “M*A*S*H” episode. Maybe there’s evolutionary theory about gratification
> that promotes immediate survival surpassing gratification that promotes
> future survival of the species.
> ---
>
> Since I was paged by Byron, here's a bit of research. First, a couple of
> early variations on the theme attributed to Hemingway and W.C. Fields:
>
> ---
> Perry Miller, "The Reimportation of Ideas"
> in _The Impact of America on European Culture_, 1951, p. 91
> [A]s Hemingway contends [...] whiskey is better than sex because after
> finishing the bottle you can always throw it at somebody.
> https://archive.org/details/impactofamericae0000unse/page/90/mode/2up
> ---
> Gene Fowler, _Minutes of the Last Meeting_, 1954, p. 22
> "On or off the record," said the red-nosed authority [sc. W.C. Fields] on
> almost any subject, "you can say this for me. There may be some things
> better than sex, and some things may be worse. But there is nothing exactly
> like it."
> https://archive.org/details/minutesoflastmee00fowl/page/22/mode/2up
> ---
>
> Here are early examples where food items are described as "better than
> sex":
>
> ---
> Indianapolis Star, Dec. 21, 1958, p. 8, col. 3
> Jane Allison, "Hoosier in Manhattan: Candyholics at Yuletide Need Careful
> Watching"
> "It's better than sex!" said the most uninhibited Candyholic we ever met,
> yesterday.
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-indianapolis-star-better-than-sex/183749625/
> ---
> Charlotte (NC) Observer, Feb. 7, 1960, p. 16, col. 1
> Rolfe Neill, "Everybody's Business: Superior To Sex?"
> Moses Richter, the textile-farming magnate, has developed a luscious
> variety of peach that is a cross between the nectarine, pear and peach. A
> woman in New York who was the recipient of some of the fruit wrote:
> "Honestly, those peaches are better than sex."
> Richter's lying awake nights - unusual for him - trying to figure out how
> to get that endorsement on a can label in a dignified way.
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charlotte-observer-better-than-sex/183749234/
> ---
>
> In the '60s, the "better than sex" line also got applied to activities like
> surfing and skydiving.
>
> ---
> Time, Feb. 16, 1962, "Sport: That Wall of Water," p. 38
> For each wave rider, the thrills were different. Some, like Conrad Canha,
> 29, an unemployed dairy worker from Honolulu, came primarily for the
> nightlong pre-meet beach parties. [...] Others, like Ernest ("Mud") Werner,
> 30, lived only for the competition: "When you crack through a tunnel, beat
> it across the face of a wave, and come out the other side - why, man, it’s
> a great thrill. You feel five or six emotions all at once. It's better than
> sex. You own the world.”
> https://time.com/archive/6625225/sport-that-wall-of-water/
> ---
> Gardena (CA) Valley News, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 18, col. 1
> Pete Eastman, "It's Better Than Sex"
> "It's better than sex," he said, "almost like a narcotic. But it's safer
> than playing golf, statistically."
> The miracle sport is sky diving, and the speaker was Lyle Cameron, editor
> of Sky Diver Magazine.
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/article/gardena-valley-news-and-gardena-tribune/183755346/
> ---
> Sydney Morning Herald, July 20, 1968, p. 22, col. 1
> Margaret Jones, "Australian Film-Maker Acclaimed"
> [Peter] Sykes' main claim to fame so far is that he managed to offend
> deeply the censors in Australia with his portrait of Australian surfers in
> a [1966] documentary called "Walkabout to Cornwall."
> Even after a gap of two years, he remains surprised by this. It was by no
> means an unsympathetic portrait, merely, he says with a grin, "showing them
> at their natural pastime of getting drunk," and delivering profound
> judgments like "surfing is better than sex."
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sydney-morning-herald-better-than-se/183754476/
> ---
> Cosmopolitan, Oct. 1968, p. 195, col. 1 [ProQuest]
> Florence Lemkowitz, "Go West, Young Lady, Go West"
> At the Oasis Hotel, there's a therapeutic pool next to the flower-bordered,
> regular one. Some TV-production men were staying here to film a Herb Alpert
> special, and I heard them shout enthusiastically from the therapeutic pool:
> "This is better than sex!"
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org