In case you missed the memo, Super Bowl XLIX will be played Sunday. Honestly, I’m about as indifferent as you could be about the matchup.
In the ebbs and flows of professional sports, it seems like the ‘ebb’ of pro football during this particular moment shows that all the teams I like are struggling and all the teams at the top of the league are ones I don’t particularly like.
Still, the Super Bowl is a moment in which all of America comes together. It will be water cooler conversation on Monday. We’ll talk about:
- Key moments of the game.
- The halftime show.
- The pre-game show.
And of course, those memorable Super Bowl commercials.
In my on-going journaling project, I wrote about my own history with ‘the big game’ just the other day. People my age never knew a time without the Super Bowl and we’ve seen most, if not all, of them. The Super Bowl, you see, is about the same age as we are.
Stated another way, we’ve grown up with the Super Bowl (and, I guess you could say, the Super Bowl grew up with us). It started with very humble beginnings. It was a game played on a Sunday afternoon like all the rest. Now, of course, it is a Sunday night spectacle. The 60 minutes of the game, itself, is almost secondary.
I started jotting down some of my thoughts about the previous 48 editions of ‘the big game.’ I don’t remember the first three of them and I have only the fuzziest recollections of number IV. From that point, the images become a little more vibrant as I travel across time in my mind.
As a young kid, I rooted for the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys (something about silver pants, I guess). So, the Super Bowls in the 70s and early 80s were all about rooting for those teams (or rooting against the teams that stood in their way).
When the Cowboys won Super Bowl XII, for example, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Some fellows dropped by to heckle me and it seemed to backfire against them.
Dallas beat Denver, you see, and Denver had just knocked Oakland out of the chance to defend their title from Super Bowl XI. The hecklers were hoping to get a double-dip: the Jeffie special. But, it was not meant to be.
As an aside, if you ever wonder why I dislike the Broncos so vehemently, you can trace it to that period of my adolescence.
When you were a kid in those days, you lived and died with your teams. When your teams were kings, you went to middle school with a spring in your step and your chest puffed out. If your team lost, you tried as much as you could to fly under the radar to avoide some wise-guy Steelers or Dolphins fan wanting to give you the business over yesterday’s game.
Most of the time, we watched those games solo…or with our family members. In those days, the game was still played on Sunday afternoon and just wasn’t as much of a national event.
Later, as I grew up, my attitudes on the game shifted slightly even as it grew in stature. In my dating years, for example, I actually missed a couple Super Bowls for a girl. Can you imagine? I didn’t see San Fran won its first two Super Bowls in the early-mid 80s, for example. I also skipped some of the other Super Bowls in the 80s because of indifference (just couldn’t get that excited about the Giants playing Denver or the second match-up of Washington and Miami) or busy schedules.
By the late 80s and early 90s, when Lisa and I were young marrieds, the notion of a Super Bowl party started to gather steam nationally. I remember we hosted a few and attended some others. The family of one of our friends used to have a big chili cook-off associated with ‘the big game.’ Those made for some yummy late January celebrations.
One notable Super Bowl for me, personally, was the 2000 Super Bowl (Super Bowl XXXIV). That was the year of the Titans first big run (and the game that ended just one yard short of a celebration) and that was the year I fell in love with our state’s team. I’ve been a fan ever since then.
Of course, I keep waiting for their return to the top of the game!
Once our kids were old enough to get excited about the game, we’ve included them in our traditions. On some occasions, they’ve invited friends over or attended parties at the home of their friends. We’ve attended a number of Super Bowl parties since then, as well, and we’ve taken a few years off.
It’s been a busy January for us, so I think we are inclined to take it easy on Sunday this year. Just sit back, enjoy some great treats, watch the telecast and soak up all those notable moments we’ll be talking about on Monday and for years to come.
JG
Originally posted 1/29/2015
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