Super Bowl XLV

And so the extravagance and hoopla has come and gone and I am not talking Mubarak here. The hype around the first Super Bowl to be held in North Texas (the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington to be exact) was unreal with seemingly every TV and radio station, bank, 7-11 and pawn shop having countdowns, parties and tie-in's.

Did Jerry really sell his soul when he fired Landry and won those three Super Bowls back in in the early 1990's? Was it a mistake to have a roof on the new stadium, meaning you know who cannot always see His favorite team? Certainly the elements conspired against the big game. The weather the weekends before and after was perfect but during the days leading up Super Bowl Sunday we had a mini ice age and so may things went wrong: parties cancelled, stadium entrances closed (due to ice falling off the roof), temporary seats not complete. The latter was the worst. Imagine shelling out several thousand $s and not being allowed to see the game live. What a fiasco.

I am not sure if it was Jerry's fault or the NFL. Apparently the League takes over all aspects of the stadium in the weeks leading up to the game. We got to see NFL flexibility at work when we stopped by the stadium the week before Super Bowl Sunday and attempted to snap a photo. Some heavy handed NFL security thug was quick to jump in front of the camera and remind us this was against NFL policy. This never happened when Jerry was running the show, although Jerry might have charged for the photo... At least the game itself was great and the right team won.

I met some Packers fans straight out of Wisconsin at a McDonald's the Friday before the game. They did not complain one iota about the weather and I felt bad trying to craft a Chamber of Commerce type answer to their question "What is there to do in Irving"? They did not wait around for an answer... Some lug nut in an SUV was spinning his wheels in the McDonald's parking lot and they all rushed out to help him get traction. I was ready to leave him stuck. Cheese Heads are really nice people.

The weather did not ruin everything. The kids had four days off school due to the ice and got to go sledding when the snow came. The hardest part was finding a hill when all we have is prairie.




And a couple of neighboring kids got to perform that most celebrated of all Texas sports (not football) but would you believe - pond hockey? For about 30 seconds my head was back in Connecticut...