StuporBowl Sunday

The Dallas Cowboys have appeared in the Super Bowl eight (8) times, and won five (5) of those times. The only team with a better record is the Pittsburgh Steelers. But seriously, who cares about the Steelers? Maybe people living in - or near - Pittsburgh. {Cousin Matt?}

I used to live in Arlington, that little town nestled between the two super-towns of Forth Worth and Dallas. It was a nice little town, although I didn't see much more of it than the few blocks surrounding our neighborhood, up to and including the Ben Franklin (where I bought my first camera) and the 7-Eleven (where we bought all those Slurpees, and collected all those baseball cups).

It was in the little town of Arlington that I first appreciated the game of football, and the team that was Dallas. There was no choice in the matter. In Texas, you either liked the Dallas Cowboys, or you were ridden out of town on a rail. In my case, since none of the other 5th graders knew what a "rail" was, the punishment for ignorance or apathy was ridicule and torture. The torture was generally dished out in the form of a fast-moving dodgeball in the gymnasium. Aimed at one's head.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I quickly grew to appreciate - no, enjoy would be a better word for it - the game of football. Many a happy afternoon was spent playing it on the grounds of the school during recess. It was there on those grounds I learned to run, block, tackle, catch and throw. {Note that we didn't play any sissy 'touch' rules back then; schools in Texas wanted their boys to be tough, and that meant tackle, and that meant bruising, high-speed contact with the ground at various angles.} And I learned the joy of camaraderie when a ball was well-thrown or well-caught. {I also learned not to ask what certain four-letter words which had been graffiti-sprayed on the side of the gym, meant.}

I was caught up in the moment, the joy of living in a town near the city where great football originated. It was all the boys talked about: the Cowboys. The Champions. The Super Bowl contenders. And we knew Roger Staubach, the ultimate quarterback, and Tom Landry, the ultimate coach. We all wanted to be Roger Staubach. {None of us wanted to be Tom Landry; he yelled too much.} We all wanted to be the star quarterback, throwing those long passes into the end zone.

Playing the game was fun. Watching the game - well, that was kinda like slow torture. "Here, we're going make you sit down and watch a bunch of other guys play the game, but you don't get to join in. Ha!"

Truth be told, I didn't even like to watch Roger Staubach on television. I wanted to be out in the backyard, practicing those long throws so I could be him. Or having one of my friends throwing the ball to me so I could pretend to be one of those wide receivers.

There was a lot of joy associated with the Super Bowl, mainly because the Cowboys were in it so much during the 70s, and they were our home-town team (at least for that year we lived in Arlington); and it carried over a bit even when we'd moved up to Richmond, where the rivalry between the Cowboys and the Redskins was intense. The loyalty was still there for the old home-town team, and I could be found at various times out on the field at the school or at the park or over at a friend's house, playing 3-man football, tossing the old pigskin and pretending to be the star player; but it was still difficult (if not impossible) to find anything fun about planting myself in a chair or on a couch in front of a television to watch a bunch of other people, mostly people I didn't know or recognize, having the fun I was wishing to have.

{Incidentally, if you've ever played football with a limited number of friends, you'll probably remember how challenging it is to play three-man football. That is, one-on-one football with a designated QB. Speedy and I played it for hours, along with our other friend whose name escapes me. It was hard on me because Speedy was over six feet tall in 7th grade, with huge, groping arms that could knock the ball right out of the air when you knew it was coming right to you. But since the other guy couldn't run so well, he was usually the QB.}

In my later years, the number of football games in which I was involved dropped off as they were replace by other interests. Like tennis, basketball, soccer, electronics, computers, girls, job, college. In fact, I can't remember the last serious game of football in all those years, outside of a game or two that the cousins played on Grandma's rolling hillside at Thanksgiving time. Once college was done and "life" started, the games were even fewer and farther between. Maybe once or twice on Long Island. Maybe a couple times at Camp Casey on Whidbey Island.

So if the fun part of the game was mostly done, what about the un-fun part of the game?

Well, I can count the number of times I've actually sat and watched the Super Bowl on one hand. Watching sports just bores me to tears. Even if I'm surrounded by bowls of chips and M&Ms and crates of soda.

But it's certainly not boring to be with friends during the Super Bowl, sitting around the kitchen table while the game is going on in the other room, yapping about all kinds of non-sports-related stuff, and eating snacks all afternoon/evening. No, that's actually quite enjoyable!

Which is why this year was exceptionally fun. We didn't sit at home and watch the game. Instead, we went over to someone else's home and didn't watch the game (mostly). We sat around the table and ate excellent snacks and talked about all sorts of non-sports-related things. OK, we did catch a few minutes of the game at the end - and it was kind of exciting because the score was very close. But we didn't watch the entire game, nor did we bother to watch the half-time show. {Several of the commercials were already on the Web, and Madonna has no draw for us, so the half-time show was a wash.}

So instead of a StuporBowl Sunday, where the brain and the stomach are completely overloaded by 'junk-food', and one wanders around in a stupor for the next few days babbling about football and commercials and dietary misdemeanors, we had a SuperFriend Sunday, with wonderful food, excellent company, and an evening that ended at just the right time so that we could get home at a reasonable hour.