Your Super Bowl memories

stop poking the handicapped.

 

I remember growing up, obviously across the pond, when I was still a kid, going to bed knowing the video was going to record the game for me. Then going to school the next day, coming home and watching the video.

Then I got a little older, say 13-14, and I'd be listening to the game late at night on the Armed Forces Radio Network. We had a U.S. Airbase nearby, so I got pretty good reception. It was the same thing for listening to NBA and MLB games late at night.

I didn't get to stay up for the game until I went away to college. Obviously in Britain with the time difference, the game doesn't start until 11:30 p.m., and with school at 7 a.m. the next morning, there wasn't a way my parents were going to let me stay up. The radio broadcasts with Jack Buck and Hank Stram were all I had.

 

Refs can't cheat, only players can do that. Refs can only blow calls. Besides, the refs blew more calls in the Rams-Patriots Super Bowl than the one I referenced.

 

nay. refs can't cheat if they don't have it in for a certain team from the PNW. if they do, then they're cheaters.

 

Mine was the Rams-Steelers, played in January 1980. We had gotten our first color television and Armed Forces Network was broadcasting the game live. My dad let me stay up late with he, my mom, and their friends, to watch the games. I've watched several Super Bowls since (and yes, I stayed up until 5 a.m. here in Unoccupied Europe watching the Giants win and making me look good because I told all my German friends they would win by three points) but that's the one I remember the most.

 

I was more of a college fan as a kid so I didn't pay much attention to the pros until XX (the Bears rawked).

 

Lessee...partying with the Raiders at the Old Absinthe Bar on Bourbon Street in 1981, then scoring a $40 ticket from a guy in a camper outside the Superdome on game day. Sat in temporary seating behind the end zone. That's me waving on Kenny King's touchdown...rending asunder the chain-link fence outside the Rose Bowl to see Giants-Broncos in 1987.

 

Before I became disillusioned with the NFL, I was a heavy Chargers fan, so Super Bowl XXIX is among my most memorable.

Flew from Phoenix to San Diego, where my then-roommate's family lived, to be a part of the madness on the one-in-a-million chance they won. Steve Young took care of that possibility in about two minutes, so we ordered Chinese takeout from a mom and pop place.

To this day, best Chinese food I've ever had. Was the highlight of the day.

Even though San Diego got killed, I really wasn't disappointed. One, even we weren't expecting a win, and for a team's first time, I think just getting to the Super Bowl is all that matters.

 

The first quarter of Super Bowl XX. The Bears did horrible, horrible things to Tony Eason.

 

SB XXV, for all the wrong reasons.
The night before, a couple of my childhood friends (I was 13 at the time) talked me into staying out all night, wandering the streets. Why, I don't know. But we did the "you tell the folks you're sleeping over my house, I'll tell my folks I'm at your house" routine. Shortly after midnight, one of my friends gets sick. He's puking up black stuff in the employees' bathroom of a supermarket. So we bring him home.
Little later, around 2 a.m., there's two of us left. We stop in a 7-11 for donuts and a coke. Apparently, either the clerk called the cops or they just walked in. I'm playing a video game, waiting for my friend, and look over to see him laughing hysterically. I'm trying to play it cool as the cops ask what we're doing out so late. But my asshole friend is just snickering, greatly hurting our cause. After a few minutes of the song and dance, the cops say c'mon, we're taking you home.
We get in the cop car and one of them actually says, "This is our good deed for the day." Yeah, right until it ends in an ass-whippin' from dad. Damn baconators. One of many reasons I dislike police officers. But I digress...
So anyway, around 2:15 a.m. we get to my house. Dad answers the door. My mom wasn't home that night for some reason, and I think he was slugging Schmidt's and watching porno. Dad was just like that. He's none too pleased. I trudge inside and head up to bed.
The next day, we watch perhaps the greatest Super Bowl ever. In icy silence. I'm afraid to say anything, for fear of pissing him off and getting into a fight. And, to make matters worse for a family of Eagles fans, the fucking Giants won.
After mom gets home a couple days later, the Super Bowl night incident is discussed. I'm grounded for several weeks. And now, every time Super Bowl XXV is discussed, I remember sitting on the couch feeling the old man's disapproving glare. Not very good times...

 

But, counter to my previous story, I remember Super Bowl XXXIII for all the right reasons.
My then-girlfriend and I had been dating for about a month. On the day of the Super Bowl, she comes over around 1 p.m. and a couple hours later we start making out. All day. Through the end of the pregame. Through the first half. We took a break for dinner around halftime, then got back to it at some point in the second half. By the end of the postgame show, I was well on my way to losing my 22-year-old virgin tag.
I don't remember much of the actual game. Elway's bomb to Rod Smith, and maybe one of Chandler's interceptions is about all that really stands out. But now I can't watch a Super Bowl without at least thinking back to that happy day.
Of course, that same girlfriend turned into a total she-bitch six months later. But that's a whole other painful and tragic tale that has nothing to do with the Super Bowl.

 

I have vague memories of the Dolphins early-70s Super Bowls which turned me into the Fish looser fanboy I remain to this day. I have watched every one since XII (Cowboys-Broncos) and have every one since XXIII (49ers-Bengals) on tape or DVD.

Closest I ever came (or probably ever will come) to going to a SB: XVI in Detroit. A buddy's dad had tickest through his company but as a poor high school studernt I couldn't come up with the $75 (I'm pretty sure that was the price) to go.