Your first Super Bowl

Put me in the Super Bowl XX club. Watched it with my dad and his friend in the basement as kind of a mini-Super Bowl party. Been obsessed with the game ever since. I'm not too proud to say I remember what I was doing for every Super Bowl since.

 

IV was the first I watched all the way through. For some reason, my mom and her sister decided all the kids needed to see "Dr. Dolittle" at the theater during III.

 

Brenda and Eddie, always gumming up the fucking works.

 

I vaguely remember us having a Super Bowl party for XVI (I was 5), and only because there was a guy with one hand who showed up. I remember watching most of XVII, and spending the second half of XVIII working on pulling out a loose tooth, which was the first tooth I ever lost.
The night before SB XXV, a friend convinced me it'd be fun to pull the old "you tell your parents we're going to Jim's house, I'll tell mine we're going to your house, and then we'll wander the streets all night" bit. Which worked fine until a cop spotted us and dragged my ass home at 2 a.m. That was not a fun one to watch with Dad. I think we said two words to each other the whole time.
Super Bowl XXXIII was fun, though. My girlfriend and I made out through most of the game, then I lost my virginity later that night.
Weird how I've had so many life-defining moments on Super Bowl Sunday.

 

Even though the first Super Bowl I remember watching any huge part of was XVII (Redskins-Dolphins), I felt like I knew just about everything from every game because of a Weekly Reader book about the Super Bowl that I got in second grade, and those 30-minute NFL Films highlight reels.
Used to love watching the highlight reel marathons they'd show on ESPN the night before the Super Bowl.

 

I first started becoming really aware of the NFL in 1976 at the age of 8, so it was XI for me.

I remember my mom hauling my sister and me around on some errands and then we stopped by my grandpa's. It was just another Sunday to mom -- she hated football. But I got to see a good part of the game at grandpa's. I remember seeing Tarkenton fumble at the Raiders' 2.

I remember me and my friends were all rooting for the Raiders (me because I was pissed about the Rams losing to the Vikings in the NFC title game), because they had all the cool guys, like Stabler, Casper, Biletnikoff, Sistrunk, etc.

 

Somewhere, Eugene Robinson is nodding his head in agreement....

 

X was the first one I remember but XII was the first one I watched from start to finish. One of the things I remember most about that was that CBS (I think) made a big deal about having a "bird's eye" camera shooting down from the ceiling of the Superdome.

 

I cannot remember the Steelers before Swann and Stallworth, so IX would be the start.

 

You wouldn't want to.

 

XI is the first one I remember, a couple of weeks after seeing the Steelers lose to Oakland. We were at my grandparents' house in Pittsburgh. I was listening to everyone lament about the loss of "Frank O'Harris" and I didn't understand why they weren't rooting for Oakland (they lived in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh). I really only remember seeing the end of the SB that year and seeing Stabler celebrating. And for some reason I felt scared of John Madden.

XII is the first one I remember watching straight through and remembering significant details of the game, like the aforementioned camera at the top of the dome, Dorsett jogging back from the locker room after leaving the game for a while and Norris Weese coming in for Craig Morton at some point.

 

Remember them all. I was a big AFL fan, and I remember being so pumped that the Chiefs were getting a chance to play the mighty Packers, and then pfffft!

I've watched every one except for the second half of the Packers-Steelers in 2011, when I was in the exam room at the ER with a fever and a swollen leg that turned out to be caused by a blood clot in my left thigh, resulting in a four-day hospital stay.

I covered the Bears-Patriots, and I remember thinking that Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan were like a couple of preening peacocks trying to upstage the other in the postgame media swarm.