The men in my family are not exactly what you might call “tradition heavy”. We’d toss around obligatory football on Thanksgiving, and we’d toss off our shoes for an obligatory nap on Christmas afternoon. Considering it was just me and my dad, though, there wasn’t a lot of guy time in the house. But one special year in sports gave us our first real tradition.
I spent most of my senior year of high school incapacitated because of a very delicate surgery, keeping me out of school for periods of time and leaving me stuck at home. Say what you will about the inconvenience, but it left me a lot of time to catch up on old Playstation 2 games and finally watch the playoffs and games preceding the Super Bowl. It was the first time that I actually felt like I had an educated view of the teams in the Super Bowl, what their strengths were and what could be exploited. Of course, only the Giants could really be exploited, as Tom Brady and the perfect Patriots could do no wrong in the regular season. We were itching to see an upset, as was most of America it seemed like, because plucky Eli Manning and his talented receiving core had looked promising.
So I hobbled to my couch on game day, and my dad and I strapped in, as I shot off a few text messages to see if any of my friends were interested in joining. My dad and I held onto every minute, as both teams looked both dominant and fallible, and neither seemed to have any obvious edge in what was going on. By the start of the third quarter, with the score still 7-3, my house began filling to the brim, and my mother began cooking all of the food we had in the house. We shoveled down nachos, mozzarella sticks, burgers and soda as we watched the circus acts on our screen. David Tyree and Plaxico Burress, Wes Welker and Tom Brady were acrobats up there. By the time Tyree caught his historic one-handed helmet catch, the house cheered like we were the New York Giants sideline. And for a moment, we were, as everyone was on their feet yelling with the final two minute drive of the Giants. We hugged and jumped and began almost crying as the Giants grabbed hold of the Super Bowl Title, a team none of us cared too much about a week before. It was the perfect game, and it became the perfect tradition for my father and I. Now, anyone who is home is welcome over to the Clinton house on Super Bowl Sunday, because mom will be in the kitchen, dad will be in his designated seat, and we’ll all be screaming in a way we haven’t screamed all year.
It’s the Super Bowl, the time when everyone becomes a fan.