Football Widow

Countdown to Super Bowl Xtra Large II: Football Widows Unite

January 28, 2008 7:26 PM | 0 Comments

With just days before the Super Bowl and days before what has become my traditional annual Super Bowl party (Sports Widow Super Bowl Party III), I'm finalizing my strategy, so in the interests of helping my Sports Widow comrades, I'm sharing mine with you. Here are my tips as a card-carrying Sports Widow/ Football Widow.

Tip #1 - Do your homework: Find out which teams are playing. I usually just ask my charming, knowledgeable cubicle neighbors at work. They mock and malign me for not knowing, but eventually furnish the answer: the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

Tip #2 - Just for kicks, decide where your allegiance stands, where you'll direct your support (while fleeting). Maybe this isn't a fair assessment, but Giants have rarely been treated kindly in the literature. I mean who wants to have the giant from Jack in the Beanstalk landing in their living room with the golden hen and the harp and all that nonsense? Patriots, on the other hand, have a far better reputation. I mean, who doesn't like Paul Revere and the Raiders? They're the very backbone of America as we know it. Furthermore, my 10-year-old fan Austin is rooting for the Patriots, so I choose the Patriots, and for the rest of this week, I plan to integrate them into conversations like the vocabulary-word-of-the-day. Since it's a 3-syllable team, I will nickname them the Pats (the Riots won't do) and say things like, "My Pats (note the tender use of the pronoun) are going to wipe up the field with Those Giants," or "How about My Pats?"

Tip #3 - Once you've selected your team, the menu becomes much easier. In Belgium, you'd get waffles. In Brussels, you'd order sprouts or chocolates. In France, french fries. You know where I'm headed. In New England, ... it's of course clam chowder, and even more specifically, in Boston, ... it's Baked Beans! See how easy it is. Every year, I suggested serving a soup in hollowed out, football-shaped artisan bread loaves, but the hard-core fans around me always guffaw and suggest it's too Martha Stewarty. Other popular selections are chili, little smokies (it's a crock pot, self-serve kind of day), nachos and for novelty, you can introduce a different chip variety each quarter. I was just in Party City and they had a ton of generic NFL Super Bowl accoutrements, but you can always be scrappy and dig out left over 4th of July plates and napkins, if it's not too obvious.

Tip #4 - Are you going to serve macrobrews or microbrews? In Seattle, there is no choice. You HAVE to serve microbrews. Again, sticking with our Patriot theme, Samuel Adams is a shoe-in or other brews from the New England region.

Tip #5 - If your guests include kids, appoint a VCR commander, whose task is to screen for inappropropriate TV content. This is a sober task, requiring quick remote reflexes and shrewd judgment. Last year, Jamie deftly bounced between inappropriate commercials and The Puppy Bowl, which was about as innocuous as TV viewing can be. I particularly appreciated the novel camera angles they employed in The Puppy Bowl, especially the dramatic under-the-water-bowl shots where you can see the dogs' tongues lapping up the water.

Tip #6 - What's your motivation, your attitude? Are you going to fake it, ask lots of dumb questions or just be a voyeur? I mostly opt for the voyeuristic approach. After all, my roots are as an anthropologist, one who studies but doesn't judge another culture.

Tip #7 - Have fun. This is a celebration. It's the end of football as we know it until August. Since I'm in marketing and advertising, I love to see the commercials that debut during The Super Bowl, and I've always been a fan of Tom Petty's, who is the Half-time Show marquis event. In the words of Tom Petty, You don't have to live like a refugee. That phrase speaks to Football Widows everywhere.

Life is a contact sport. So don't live like a football refugee.

The Sports Widow
(aka Nan Hall)

Looking for more tips for surviving Super Bowl Sunday? Check out Surving Superbowl on KING5 TV Evening Magazine.
Planning a Super Bowl Party? Check out The Last Hurrah: the Ultimate Super Bowl Party Planner