Super Bowl Memories Parts I and II
Drunken roller coaster rides, power outages, Philly Specials, stealing a colleagues wallet and other Super Bowl memories. (An encore presentation.)
Greetings, dear readers! I will be winging my way to New Orleans, or possibly preparing my first Super Bowl LIX diary, as you read this. It’s an encore presentation of two features published on Football Outsiders in February, 2023. This material is no longer available on the Internet, so I am republishing it both for your entertainment and so it does not disappear for all eternity. Enjoy!
Super Bowl Memories Part I
Drunken, middle-aged vertigo sufferers should not ride rollercoasters.
The Super Bowl LII (Eagles over Patriots) Media Party took place in the Mall of America Nickelodeon Universe amusement park. Media headquarters were also in the Mall of America. The Patriots and Eagles were housed in the hotels attached to that shopping Versailles and held their press conferences there. Radio Row was in the food court. Media members boarded at the smaller hotels about a mile away and were shuttled daily across tundra-like parking lots. It was as if Kevin Smith were directing a Super Bowl movie.
The Media Party is typically held on a Tuesday and offers free top-shelf food and booze. Bigwigs rarely attend. I skipped it in my first few years because I wanted to be aloof and outsider-ish. But skipping the party in 2018 would mean eating alone at a Shake Shack an escalator ride away. So I attended, as did many of my friends in the business. And lo, the beers and vodka-tonics did flow, under the watchful eyes of SpongeBob and Aang the Avatar.
Early in the evening, at around the fourth drink and fifth appetizer, phones began blowing up around the park. The Chiefs just traded Alex Smith to Washington. Each attendee had a choice to make: “cover” the story (which for most of us meant writing a little blog entry with some analysis and spin, 45 minutes of work when sober, a grueling ordeal under the circumstances) or pretend to be out-of-pocket and “miss” the text or email until it was too late. Some colleagues, sadly, didn’t have a choice: write Winnerz and Loserz of the Alex Smith Trade at 9 pm Central Time with a quarter-load on or seek employment elsewhere. Fortunately, Bleacher Report had an “instant reaction” team, and I was one tier of the org chart above sea level.
There’s something about dodging unnecessary work that makes you only want to party harder. Therefore, those of us who didn’t trudge off to our hotels or the workroom proceeded to raise what passes for hell among our set. This, in turn, led several grown men onto Rugrats and Last Airbender-themed coasters and flumes, often with cocktails in our hands, even those of us who need prescription Meclizine to ride a tour bus.
This story does not end with me throwing up. I would not admit it to you, even six years later, if I had. But it does end with bleary, woozy discomfort and disorientation, which I have learned after nine Super Bowls to be the ultimate distillation of the experience.