I’m still not sure why I started watching football. My dad doesn’t like watching sports, and while my mom occasionally does, it’s not a habit for her. I didn’t grow up in the sports-heavy environment that many other fans did. Our family friend Felipe, Dr. Hinojosa to the rest of you, swears that he taught my brother and I everything we know about the sport, but if that were true, I’d be a horrid Dallas Cowboys fan. Without delving too deeply into my childhood memories, you all don’t pay me enough to do that on here, I’d say my fandom came from a combination of peer pressure, the Eagles being everywhere in Lancaster Pennsylvania, and an obsession with reading the sports page of the local newspaper every day.
Despite a lack of parental interest in the general going-ons of the National Football League, it became somewhat of a family tradition to go to Super Bowl parties. At the first one I went to I mostly played the Lego Island videogame. This was at the point in my football-watching career, where if the Eagles were not playing I was not interested in the game at all. I also thought that every team should just throw it all the time, marking me as a quite well-informed prognosticator of the future of NFL offenses. The second party I remember going to was full of adults who could largely care less about the game, and were more interested in filling out the forms the host had created in order to rank the commercials. There’s a whole other essay about American capitalism in there, but I’ll save that for another time. Since those early parties, across several moves, in both time and space, that tradition has been maintained and evolved.
This isn’t exactly abnormal. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest events on the American cultural calendar. Millions of people watch THE BIG GAME TM every year. It brings in tons of ad revenue money, alcohol and snack sales go through the roof, and bookies take in more bets than they do any other day of the year. It is the culmination of the American Holiday season that starts with Halloween, starts to ramp up with Thanksgiving, peaks with Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and fades into the cold with the Super Bowl. This year is different.
I hosted my first Super Bowl party in 2016. The year before, during a huge blizzard, my friend had hosted one. But that friend had moved out of Chicago, and no one had stepped up to fill the void. Part of the reason I hosted one was that I didn’t want the tradition to die. Another part of it was that I wanted an excuse to spend all day making ribs and drinking beer. Not that at twenty-five I needed an excuse to do that, having one just made me feel better about it. I had also never really hosted a party before, and I figured it was time. So, I did just that. It went great and I continued doing one every year after that. Until this year.
Super Bowl parties have always been about three separate things for me. One part football, one part food, and part friendship. The Super Bowl comes in the dark days of February. February, for those not in the know, is the worst time to be in Chicago. It’s still dark, the temperatures are regularly in the single digits, a grey icy mush covers the city, and there is no sign of spring. Holing up with a bunch of friends in some apartment, eating foods that would make any dietician gasp, you should see my friend Josh’s Artichoke Dip recipe, is all part of how we cope with the weather. It’s for those reasons that I made my Super Bowl party a potluck.
I’ve already written about potlucks here, but that was pre-pandemic, so they deserve a few extra words. Eating homemade food with friends is one of the things I’ve missed most in these five hundred days of solitude. Partly because I think I’m a good cook and like to show-off, but also because there’s something life-affirming about sharing salt, bread, and beer with people you love. In my opinion you can’t really be friends with someone until you’ve eaten food with them. It’s why people like going out to brunch, or grilling, or just hanging out with a bowl full of pretzels and a cooler full of PBR tallboys. The sustenance seals the deal.
Super Bowl parties had all of this in abundance. My friend Mark made his excellent Mac and Cheese. One year we had dueling buffalo chicken dips. My friend Kristen made pulled pork. I made ribs. One year some friends brought a dang cake! Countless other people brought countless other delicious foods and drinks. It was a feast. There was always enough for people to take some home. We never had enough ice, or room in the cooler for drinks, but that’s a good problem to have.
The food and the friendship part of the Super Bowl party were great. The football, of course, is the sticking point. Not that some people just don’t care about the game, but the sport and its trappings. CTE, and the physical damage done to the athletes, remains a specter haunting the sport. The league’s embrace of US militarism and jingoism, in addition to its long history of racism, sexism, and sexual assault apologia make it hard, if not, impossible for many people to watch. But people, including myself, keep coming back. Everything I talked about in the previous paragraphs is probably why.
So, I’ll watch the Superbowl again this year. I’ll zoom with some friends while the game goes on. My girlfriend will make some great mac and cheese and I’ll make ribs. I’ll drink a couple of beers. It’ll be nice. But not the same.
So as not to end this on a complete downer, here is a funny video. I know I promised these at the end of every post and then stopped, but what can you do!