Tips for making the Super Bowl fun if you don’t like football
For connoisseurs of the porcine spheroid, today is the day.
The Super Bowl. The Big Game. The culmination of the pro football season.
By day’s end, either the Broncos of Denver or the Seahawks of Seattle will be kings of the American football universe. The winning team will have its name etched into the record books and remembered by fans as Super Bowl champion until, oh, at least April.
But Super Bowl XLVIII is more than a mere football game. Tracing its humble beginnings to MCMLXVII (1967 to us non-Romans) and the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, Super Sunday has evolved into America’s Party Day.
On this day, Americans gather to wrest a chunk of enjoyment from the winter landscape.
Odds are good that, even if you have no interest in the actual game, you’ll be attending a Super Bowl party today with other people who are football fanatics. (Three-quarters of America will watch the game, about a third of them at a Super Bowl party.)
The problem for football-averse partygoers: Once the pre-game socializing ends and the game kicks off, the parties can become a Super Bore.
Fear not. In the spirit of those coloring books that keep your kids occupied until the chicken fingers arrive, we offer a collection of activities that will keep you busy while everybody else is oohing and aahing over clean pass routes, fingertip catches and bone-crushing hits.
Enjoy.
COMMERCIAL BINGO
You know how bingo works, right? So, before you head off to your party, create a basic five-by-five block grid on a piece of paper. Then, enter into each block one of the elements listed here which, we suspect, you’ll see in the kajillion-dollar commercials (at $4 million for 30 seconds) aired during the game.
Be careful, this might make you the hit of the party. A quarter of Super Bowl viewers say they’re only in it for the ads.
Whenever you see one of the elements, just X off that block on your homemade bingo card and see how long it takes for you to score an up-and-down, side-to-side or diagonal bingo.
By the way: For your free center space, feel free to use this photo of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Seeing him on a bingo card amuses us. Don’t know why. It just does.
X out a square on your bingo card whenever you see an ad that contains:
A talking animal (but not a monkey)
A monkey (because monkeys are hilarious and deserve their own square)
That demonic E-Trade baby (shudder).
A hipster with a goatee or a silly mustache
An A-level celebrity
A B-, C- or D-level celebrity
A Kardashian
A celebrity you thought was already dead
A rock song from the ’60s
A disco song from the ’70s
A polka
A new song by U2
A car being compared to a rocket, jet or missile.
The Budweiser Clydesdales
A llama
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Danica Patrick
A woman in a bikini
A guy in underwear
A comic book character
An ad for an Apple product
A setting that tries to be edgy by ripping off “Blade Runner,” a 1982 movie based on a short story published in 1968
An ad that makes fun of older people to sell a product that no older person would want to use in the first place
A football player who had time to make a a Super Bowl commercial because his team’s season was deep in the dumper by Columbus Day (Hello, Houston!)
ANNOUNCER DRINKING GAME
Sure, drinking games usually are played in groups. But who says you can’t enjoy the bleary-eyed, quease-inducing fun of a solo drinking game? (Disclaimer: Make sure you aren’t driving.)
This will give you a reason to listen to announcers forced to utter more words in the next four hours than they did during their entire adolescences.
Get ready, and knock back a shot of your favorite spirit every time:
An announcer references the weather.
An announcer complains (boo-hoo!) about holding a Super Bowl in an open-air stadium in New Jersey during February.
An announcer references the “Ice Bowl” (the frigid 1967 NFL championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys) for no historically valid reason at all.
An announcer references “the 12th man” (the Seahawks’ once-flattering but now overly precious name for their fans).
An announcer gives lip service to how serious the NFL is about preventing concussions among its players.
An announcer shills for a program on the Fox network that you’ve never watched. (Announcers only; don’t drink for every commercial for a Fox show or you’ll be sloshed before the first quarter is over.)
PROP BETS YOU WON’T FIND AT THE SPORTS BOOK
Some of your fellow partyers will spend much of the game sneaking furtive glances at a piece of paper and then stuffing it back into their pockets, uttering a few curse words as they do.
Those people are checking their betting slips on several occurrences, or propositions, that may occur during today’s game. A bettor might, for example, choose the team that he thinks will score first, or the quarterback who will throw the first interception, or how many field goals will be kicked during the game, or even whether the coin toss will be heads or tails.
Las Vegas sports books offer an amazing number of proposition bets — “Who will have more? Seahawks penalty yards or UNLV points (vs. Boise State on Saturday).” So, for entertainment purposes only, we offer a few prop bets you might want to keep track of today.
First time one of the game’s announcers lauds a player’s “courage” for dealing with an issue ordinary people deal with every day without benefit of national media attention.
First quarter/Second quarter/Third quarter/Fourth quarter
Will an idiot player employ the ludicrous and offensive metaphor that what football players do is even remotely similar to what real soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines do in an actual war?
Yes/No
First shot by the sideline camera guys (and you know they’re guys) of a smiling cheerleader who feels compelled to blow a kiss to the camera and make all of the single guys watching alone at home feel so very, very lonely.
First quarter/Second quarter/Third quarter/Fourth quarter
First shot of a team owner watching the game from his owner’s box while the people behind him, who couldn’t care less whether his team wins, scarf up his expensive food and drink, mocking him in unspoken derision?
First quarter/Second quarter/Third quarter/Fourth quarter
First team whose player says something during postgame interviews that has to be bleeped.
Winning team/Losing team
First time a commentator opines that a team “will have to put some points on the board” to win.
First quarter/Second quarter/Third quarter/Fourth quarter
Will opera star Renee Fleming conclude her rendition of the national anthem with a Mariah Carey-like string of gratuitous high notes just because she can?
Yes/No
Will halftime entertainer Bruno Mars wear a football jersey at some point during his show?
Yes/No
Will Flea of halftime entertainers The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a wardrobe malfunction?
Yes/No
Would that surprise anybody?
Of course not/Of course not
Will the makers of Velveeta run an ad admitting that this supposed Velveeta “shortage” we’ve been hearing so much about over the past few weeks was just a marketing gimmick?
Seriously?/Really, are you serious?
How many times will announcers try to explain what Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning’s “Omahas” mean?
Under 40/Over 40
Number of times during the game that you’ll sneak over to the room where the kids are playing to catch Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” on their TV.
Under 10/Aww, puppies!
Will the game go into overtime?
Yes/No
Will you stick around to watch Fox’s heavily hyped “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” after the game if it does?
Sure, Andy Samberg is kind of funny/Nope, because he’s no Fred Armisen
FAN DANCE
When a player scores a touchdown, a bit of end zone celebration always seems in order — killjoy referees and stupid penalties aside. So why shouldn’t fans have a few moves to break out during a game, too?
Here, we offer, in classic cha-cha lesson style, a celebratory dance that’s sure to amaze your fellow guests when things get slow. Just follow the footprints.
(Disclaimer: Attempt at your own risk. We accept no liability if you’re silly enough to try this and end up pulling, straining, spraining or otherwise injuring something.)
PARTY SIGNALS
Football referees use hand signals to indicate what type of foul was committed.
We think a few hand signals could be useful during a Super Bowl party as well. Here, we offer a few that might come in handy as the party progresses.
Feel free improvise — the real refs sure seem to — and don’t worry if you look silly. Seriously. Do you think refs enjoy looking like they’re starting a performance of “I’m a Little Tea Pot” every time they have to signal a safety?
1. This salsa is a bit spicy, don’t you think?
2. My team is not playing as well as I expected them to.
3. My wife disapproves of me staring at cheerleaders.
4. This guacamole may have been sitting here too long.
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.
