MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Does anybody still have Super Bowl parties around here? The last one I went to was two years ago in Myrtle Beach and it was attended by about 30 people from the Cumberland area at a place called Oscar’s.
Prior to that, I couldn’t tell you the last Super Bowl party I attended, other than it was before the pandemic when it seemed like all of the bars around here had some sort of something for the Super Bowl. So while I’m sure some places still do something for the big game, it just doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore.
Of course, it’s been a while since one of the three regional teams – Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Washington – has been to the Super Bowl (2013, Ravens), and in the past when the Ravens, Steelers or Redskins got there a lot of people held gatherings at their homes. Maybe that’s the reason – no area teams, no real interest – but unless everyone I know is very subtly trying to tell me something, the Super Bowl party seems to be a thing of the past.
Truthfully, most years the Super Bowl party was the only reason most of us had any reason to even feel a twinge of excitement for the Super Bowl itself – that and the commercials. Anymore, though, it seems all of the Super Bowl overkill you see on television has overkilled interest in the actual event. Plus, the whole commercials thing doesn’t seem to be what it once was either.
I remember in the very early days of the Super Bowl (yes, there are those of us still around who have seen every one of them), everybody went to somebody’s house every year to watch the game, as Super Bowl Sunday had become an unofficial national holiday. It doesn’t feel that way anymore, though, outside of the two cities whose teams are playing in the game.
The first and last Super Bowl party our family hosted was Super Bowl III and my father invited about 10 of his friends to the house to watch the Baltimore Colts play the New York Jets because seemingly everybody in Cumberland was a Colts fan.
As I said, it was the last Super Bowl party the old man ever hosted. What a disaster. The Colts, of course, lost the game (or whatever it is they did) and a lot of bad words were being said rather loudly downstairs in the family rec room, particularly when Earl Morrall threw the interception into double coverage to Johnny Sample instead of the touchdown pass to wide-open Jimmy Orr.
“Glen!” I remember my mother, a ticked-off Colts fan herself, saying to the old man. “Mr. and Mrs. Basile will hear you.” The Basiles were our kindly neighbors next door, and I suspect they may have learned a new word or two that day. I know I did.
As a fourth-grader, I normally would have thought the, uh, colorful language shooting from the mouths of folks who normally didn’t use it would have been great if not for my own devastation from the Colts losing to the Jets (which still exists today). Plus, I had to go to school the next day to face my pal Doug Wade, who, despite being a Green Bay Packers fan for his entire life, decided that was his time to root for Joe Namath and the Jets. There was one in every classroom.
Two years later when we were in the sixth grade, Doug, our pal Kevin Royce and I were invited to a party on Super Bowl Sunday, but it wasn’t a Super Bowl party. It was Robin Lewis’ birthday party at White Oak Lanes.
The three of us found it to be such a girl-thing to have a birthday party on the same day the Colts were playing the Dallas Cowboys in the Super Bowl, but, what the heck. We’d just take Robin’s birthday presents to school with us, because none of us would be able to attend the party given that the Super Bowl would be going on (this was when they played them during daylight hours).
Our parents did meet us halfway on our plan. Yes, they informed us, we would be giving Robin her gifts (that our parents, by the way, paid for), but we would be giving them to her at her party on Super Bowl Sunday. That’s right, our parents actually made us go to the birthday party while the Colts were playing for the world championship of football. Actually, our mothers made us go to the party, as our fathers understood our feelings but, naturally, wouldn’t speak on our behalf.
Actually, the party was over just after halftime, so we were able to see Mike Curtis’ interception and Jim O’Brien’s game-winning field goal that sealed what would be the final Colts championship in Baltimore, so all was well that ended well. Until, of course, the Colts left Baltimore 13 years later in the middle of the night.
Which I’m pretty sure Robin Lewis had nothing to do with.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT