Super Bowl Sundays: My Mile Markers of Life

For the first time in my 30 years of existence I watched the Super Bowl completely alone.  I have watched the big game with friends, colleagues, people who love the game, and people only interested in the commercials; in dorm rooms on little, tiny televisions, and at parties with big screens.  But this time there was no party, no football buddies, just me, a dark room, and a dog that demonstrated her interest in the game by snoring through the entire second half.  (I guess I can’t blame her…)

Perhaps it was the solitude of the moment that made me reflective that night.  Watching football does not typically make me contemplative.  But as I sat in that dark room watching the Seahawks beat the Broncos I couldn’t help but think of all those other, less solitary Super Bowls – not so much the games themselves, but who and where I was in my life at those moments in time.

You see for football addicts like me, football games act as markers or signal posts in my life.  In the same way that people claim to have a “soundtrack for their life,” or a song inspires their memory, football games can instantly bring me back to a moment I thought long forgotten.  I will often be watching television with my fiancée when a highlight from a past Super Bowl comes on, triggering a recollection and making me exclaim, “I remember that game!  I was a sophomore in college and spent all afternoon trying to find the perfect angle for my television antenna.”  I am never sure if the look Holly gives me is one of wonderment at my amazing recall or shame that so much of memory is wrapped up in a silly game.  Either way, I can’t really help it, and she still seems willing to marry me.

I will always remember the Rams versus Titans Super Bowl, for example, not just because it was a great game, but because I watched it in the basement of my teammate Brandon Schmitz’s house.  That was the year I blew out my knee playing high school football and I was still on crutches five months later.  I remember that everyone kept bringing me food because they felt bad about making me get up.  (To be fair, it is hard to hold a plate, drink, and operate crutches).  I watched the first Dallas vs Buffalo Super Bowl at my dad’s friend’s house.  Most people remember that game because of Don Beebe’s strip of Leon Lett.  I remember it because my dad’s friend Tom introduced us to his girlfriend Mimi that night.  They are still together twenty years later.

My last semester living in the dorms at Grinnell was the year that the Carolina Panthers played the New England Patriots (that was the game where we all got to see Janet Jackson’s boob).  I watched the game in my cramped dorm room, on my tiny television with terrible reception (which made it hard to see the boob).  I almost watched that game alone too, but a guy named Sam Eckstut watched with me.  I remember very little about Sam, and I have not spoken to or even thought of him since I graduated, but I remember we watched that Super Bowl together.

Holly and I once “watched” the radio broadcast of a Super Bowl.  We had just moved to Kansas and for some inexplicable reason DirecTV was not yet broadcasting local channels for our area.  We were much too isolated to have any hope of picking up the broadcast over the airwaves and we literally knew no one in town and thus could not invite ourselves over to someone else’s house.  We thought we had the problem solved by going to a sports bar, but learned upon arrival that the bars in that part of Kansas were closed on Sunday evenings.  We watched the first half of the Saints vs. Colts Super Bowl on an old tube T.V. at a terrible pizza joint, and then “watched” the radio broadcast on the NFL Network.

There was another Super Bowl radio broadcast that I remember quite well.  In 1998 the Green Bay Packers played the Denver Broncos in San Diego.  It was John Elway’s first Super Bowl victory – the game with his diving touchdown run.  I never saw that play.  I was in the backseat of a car driving from Atlantic, Iowa to our home in Norwalk, listening to the radio when Elway dove across the goal line.  That was the weekend my grandmother died.  We spent the weekend at her home in Atlantic, drove back to our home Sunday night so that my brother and I could go to school on Monday, and then returned to Atlantic for the wake Monday night.  The second half of the Super Bowl was my soundtrack for the drive Sunday night.

I have a lot of memories of that weekend, most of which have absolutely nothing to do with football.  But, that game is a part of my memory of that awful weekend.  The Super Bowl is part of that story.  The game of football is part of my story, from my earliest memories to this lonely night.  I do not always remember the scores, or the highlights, the stadiums or the Most Valuable Players, but the games are forever etched into my narrative, a small thread that weaves in and out of each chapter, but an important thread if only because it is always there, reliable, a constant.

I cannot help but wonder what future Super Bowls will bring.  Perhaps I will watch a game some day with a son or daughter.  Or maybe I will finally get to see a Super Bowl featuring my Minnesota Vikings.  Maybe they will even bother to win one.  There may be a Super Bowl in my future in which I actually get to attend the game.  Hopefully future games will not feature the insufferable snoring doggie.

When all is said done, the Super Bowl is only a game, the outcome of which has very little if any impact on my life.  It is only a game, and that’s all it needs to be.  But this game is a part of my life, marking the passage of time, reminding me of where I have been, how far I have come, and with whom I have shared the ride.  I do not know where I will be for Super Bowl XLIX.  I do not know if my life will have changed for the better, worse, or not at all.  I only know that I will be watching (next time, hopefully, with Holly by my side).