Thoughts from a broken hearted sports fan

My first words after the game ended? "We should have went to the sports bar."

Yes, I chose to have a Super Bowl party at my house last night. My friends and family put undue pressure on me, and I caved. Unfortunately, I caved on Saturday, not giving me much time to prepare. I had previous commitments on Saturday (which I may post about later), so I had to get everything ready on Sunday morning.

I got up early, and headed to the grocery store to get the necessary goodies. I wouldn't be cooking this time, since I usually prep everything the night before, so my guests would have to suffer with pre-packaged snacking. Sucks for them.

The first thing I noticed was that the store was FILLED with people wearing Cardinal gear. Let me state, I have lived in Tucson since 1996, and lived in the Phoenix area for many years before that. Of all the time I've lived in Tucson, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen people wearing Cardinals crap. On the one hand, I guess it's good that after all these years, people are starting to support the team. On the other hand, I hate bandwagon fans. If this were an SAT question it would go along the lines of "Bandwagon fans :: Sports fans as Child molesters :: Prison inmates". They're all members of the same group, but the second ones want to anally rape the first ones. I guess I just feel like these new fans haven't suffered through the shitty times to be able to truly appreciate the good time (singular) with this team.

Secondly, I made a couple of errors in execution of my shopping plan. The first one was listening to my kids, who insisted that you can buy white board cleaner at the grocery store. They were wrong. The second one was my fault completely. A classic rookie blunder. I was loading up the cart with various beer and alcohol when one of the stockers came up and asked, "Is it almost 10 yet?" I thought to myself, "What a weird time to end a shift", and responded, "You've got a couple of hours still." He continued to look at me like I was a retard when it dawned on me. In Arizona, you can't buy alcohol on Sunday before 10:00. I completely spaced this one, and now I was going to have to go back out on a second trip.

After the post-10:00 alcohol and office supply run, I set up our gambling board. This is another Umbrella Super Bowl party tradition. I go to the websites of the casinos, and come up with the ridiculous prop bets they have, and write them on the white board. All the guests pitch in some money, we all make our bets, and winner takes all. Even the casual fans really get into the game when a bunch of money is to be won.

People showed up, and I was a wreck. This was as nervous as I think I have ever been for a game. That is very unlike me, and it was pissing me off. Unfortunately, I think it was pissing everyone else off too, because I was pacing around like a caged tiger on meth. Obviously, I needed to drink more.

As for the game, unfortunately, it went as I thought it would. I thought the Cardinals would play tough, but the Steelers would win it. It still sucked, knowing that it was THIS close. The play at the end of the first half was a killer, and everyone that watches football knew it immediately when it happened. It was a pretty somber halftime at the Umbrella house.

We all know how the game ended, and I was unusually bummed out by this. And somehow, apparently my cable company showed about 30 seconds of porn right after the Fitzgerald TD, and I missed it. I had a house full of people, and nobody saw it? How is that possible? (Edit: I found out it was only on the standard definition signal. Us high-end HD bitches missed the fun). To add salt to my wounds, I ended up getting 2nd in the gambling pool. The winner? One of my older daughter's friends, who's hair coloring scheme reminds me of Pepe Le Pew. And to top it all off, after everyone left, I managed to blow my diet for the first time ever by downing a bag of Doritos (who had the best commercial, BTW). Oh well, at least I learned a lot about the Power Up Gambia mission from the back of the bag.