This Sunday, the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints will square off in Miami in Super Bowl XLIV (or "44," for normal people. I just love how the National Football League uses Roman numerals for the Super Bowl. It's wonderfully pretentious).
In that spirit, I'd like to offer some personal reminiscences of the Super Bowls I've witnessed over the years. My primary emphasis will not be on the games themselves, but on the venue where I watched the game.
The first Super Bowl I remember occurred in January, 1978, when I was eight years old. The Dallas Cowboys played the Denver Broncos. I recall that the pregame show featured an interview with John Denver, who was asked to predict the winner of the game. "Denver, of course," he said. Unfortunately for the Broncos, Mr. Denver turned out to be as adept at the art of prognostication as he was at piloting ultra-light aircraft. The Cowboys won easily, 27-10. I didn't get to watch the entire game, having been sent to bed at halftime. Naturally, in true "Young MBB" style, I did not go to bed peacefully, wanting very badly to see the remainder of the game. Looking back, I definitely put up more of a fight than did the Broncos that evening...and I was probably a lot more sore than they were the next morning, too.
The next year, the Cowboys returned to the Super Bowl, facing the Pittsburgh Steelers, in what became the first Super Bowl I watched from start to finish. The match-up between two of the league's marquee franchises did not disappoint, with the Steelers holding off a furious 4th quarter rally by the Cowboys to pull out a 35-31 victory.
In January 1980, with the Pittsburgh Steelers playing the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl XIV, I attended my first real Super Bowl party. The occasion was the 10th birthday party of a good friend of mine, who also happened to be a Steelers fan. There were 10 of us in all, and we started the day with a 5-on-5 football game at the local park. We then went to Burger Nosh, a now-defunct fast food restaurant, which was in its infancy back then. I remember amazing my friends by ordering - and finishing - a "Super Nosh" (in honor of the Super Bowl, of course), which was this massive concoction, featuring two quarter-pound hamburger patties.
The game itself was an entertaining affair, with the heavily-favored Steelers trailing the Rams heading into the 4th quarter, before pulling away with two touchdowns in the final period.
After the party, I stayed at my friend's house to sleep over. That night, we pondered whether or not there was a greater experience on this earth than watching your team win the Super Bowl on your birthday. After some discussion, we decided that there wasn't. Thirty years later, I'm not sure I'd change my answer.
The next year, the Oakland Raiders defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10, in a game that was even more one-sided than the final score indicated. I ended up listening to most of this game on radio, as I was grounded, and forbidden from watching the game. For the life of me, I can't remember what I had done to deserve that punishment, but it must have been a doozy.
Doesn't that sound like something that would come up at a serial killer's trial? "Yes, your honor, when my client was 11 years old, his parents did not allow him to watch the Super Bowl. Please take that into account when considering his sentence."
Fortunately, in January of 1982, I managed to curb my natural instinct to misbehave long enough that I merited watching the San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21 in Super Bowl XVI. The game was played in the Pontiac Silverdome, in suburban Detroit. That building, which sat empty for a few years after the Detroit Lions moved to a new stadium, was recently sold to a development group for a box of doughnuts (day old, I believe).
1 comment:
nice memories. on a more recent note, the Silverdome price was about 1/400 of the market cap of Krispy Kreme, which is quite a few dozen FRESH glazed doughnuts, thanks very much.
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