The Large Game

(For previous posts leading up to and explaining this one, please click on "Deee Troit" through "Par-Taaaay" in the Previous Posts column to the right.)

Now that Super Bowl XL has slipped from your memory with a speed that only nationally televised entertainment events possess, let me tell you about my Super Bowl.

First off, it snowed about two inches the night before the game. This was actually good, because had it been five degrees colder, it would have snowed seven inches. Instead, the Detroit area received a major slushing, which was pretty easily cleaned up. I see this as God’s warning to the NFL: “Ahem: I located the lower quarter of America closer to the equator so that you could hold Super Bowls there. Please respect my design or next time I will smite you good.” Sorry, Detroit, but I think everything might have been more fun and less stressful in a warm-weather city.

Sunday morning, Jim, Lou and I met up with the ESPN.com guys and drove into the city to get things set up at the photo trailer. We soon discovered that police had set up a security perimeter around the stadium extending roughly to Toledo, and shockingly, we did not have the proper credentials to get through. After badgering three different cops and doing a fair amount of outright lying, we managed to get through to the temporary trailer that would be ESPN.com/The Magazine’s home for the day. As Jim and the ESPN.com guys set up their techno-geek gear, Lou and I momentarily found ourselves bored and useless. And then we remembered that we were at the Super Bowl with passes that would grant us access to probably anywhere in the stadium, so we went into Ford Field and stood on the 50-yard line:

(Click on any photo for larger version) I must compliment the designers of Ford Field, because it is a tremendously beautiful stadium on the inside.

There is an amazing feeling of easy openness, even in the corridors behind the stands. The lighting is pretty spectacular, and there are a number of design features that stand out. For instance, on one side of the stadium where the upper-deck seating would normally be, there are instead suites which have been built into the pre-existing brick wall of a famous Detroit department store which once stood on the site. The result is very aesthetically pleasing:

Also, they have two Jumbotrons which are about the size of Kansas (look at the field-goal uprights for a comparison of scale):

We also saw a gentleman filming one of the end-zone pylons for two or three minutes. This must have been the same guy pictured in the previous post filming a football for several minutes. I have no idea what this is about. However, I did take the opportunity to pick up one of the pylons, whose construction and consistency I have always wondered about, because they are constantly getting smashed and knocked around during games. I now know that they are made of very durable but soft foam, and are weighted in the base by pounds of sand. Cool.

More important than the stadium design or end-zone pylons was the fact that we were standing on the field, walking around aimlessly, and grinning like idiots. Lou and I could not shake the feeling that at any moment an authority figure would demand to know what the hell we were doing on the field, but nobody ever did, because we, being the media, were allowed to be there. We called just about everyone who would pick up the phone and shared our absolute glee. The conversations consisted largely of us saying, “This is so cool,” the inarticulate but absolutely true theme for the whole experience. Because there was nothing else to do, we just hung out on the field for maybe three hours, from about 1 to 4 p.m., wandering around and simply absorbing every moment. This time was one of my favorite parts of the weekend. There was a palatable sense of anticipation and energy yet to come, but at the same time there weren’t very many people on the field or in the stands yet, so the atmosphere was also quite peaceful. Being two of the few people wandering around where the action would soon explode enhanced the sense of coolness. A little bit, we felt like the moments were ours:

After a while, both teams came out onto the field to warm up, at which point we confined ourselves to the sidelines, all the while saying things like, “Hey, that’s Ben Roethlisburger, right over there, warming up for the Super Bowl. This is so COOL!”

The increasing number of people on the field and in the stands quickly spelled the beginning of the end of the peaceful atmosphere. The growing momentum of energy and anticipation was taking over.

At some point we determined the route that we would take from the field back to the photo trailer. Unlike most stadiums, Ford Field has only one access tunnel to the field. Unfortunately for us, the tunnel exit was on the exact diagonal opposite side of the building from the photo trailer. As a result, fastest route to the trailer took us up a three-story ramp, out into the freezing cold, and down two streets running the length and width of Ford Field. Alternately, we could stay inside the stadium for most of the trip, but the crowd and winding passages nearly doubled the transit time. After a close examination on Google Satellite, I gage the outdoor route distance at a little less than a half-mile, one way. As a photo runner, I was assigned to the two ESPN photographers on the Steelers’ sideline. It was my job to collect photo cards from them at the beginning, middle, and end of each quarter, take the photo cards back to the trailer, collect new, blank cards, return to the sidelines, distribute the blank cards, and wait for the next departure time. If you think this sounds like a lot of running, you are correct.

At about two hours before game time, we returned to the trailer, met up with the photographers, and walked with them back down to the field, where they calibrated their enormous cameras:

Lou and I took in the much-changed atmosphere. Any semblance of peace had evaporated into a growing storm of Terrible Towels, pre-game activities, and bustling media crowding the sidelines.

Our reaction to the rising fervor, par for the course, was pretty much, “This is so cool, this is so cool, this is so cool.” I would love to find some more lyric and insightful way to restate that sentiment, but there just isn’t one.

There were some semi-entertaining pre-game festivities, including a celebration involving appearances by all of the previous Super Bowl MVPs. Here is the blurry photo that I managed to snap of about twenty-six of the most famous football players ever and Dion Branch (football geek joke):

After the predictably uninteresting pre-game musical entertainment (Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and others, all of whom were largely ignored by the people in the stands), the coin toss, and all of the other formalities, it was finally, at long last, time to get the show on the road. At the moment of kickoff, all I can remember is the deafening roar of the crowd, the speed of the players flying down the field, and the utter glee inside my head: “Thisissocoolthisissocoolthisissocool.”

And then it was time to work. I was given my first set of memory cards immediately after the kickoff, cruised off to the trailer, received fresh cards, and ran back to the sidelines, only to discover that I had about ninety seconds on the game clock before I had to turn around and head back to the trailer. It was at this point that I discovered the greatest possible motivation for a jogger: the faster you run, the more time you will get to spend standing ten feet away from the Super Bowl. As in:

And:

If I could find a way to market this motivation in purchasable fitness-DVD form, I would soon have enough money to buy Bolivia. Long story short, I ran about seven miles that night, making a total of ten round trips from the field to the trailer. Yes, really, seven miles, and most of it outside, in the lung-tearing chill of February in Detroit. But I’m not complaining. Every step was worth it. My efforts were rewarded with several absolutely spectacular moments. The first Roethlisburger interception happened right in front of me, as did the near-TD catch by Seattle’s D.J. Hackett. Both were perfect displays of the beautiful athleticism, physics, and timing of football, and those moments will never leave my memory. My eyes could not have been open wider, and the grin on my face could not have been larger.

This. Is. So. Cool.

In total, I would say that I spent about fifteen of the sixty game-clock minutes on the sidelines watching the action (maybe forty minutes, real-time), and the rest running to and from the trailer. As such, I had little feel for the story of the game which, I hear, wasn’t terribly interesting anyway. After a three and a half hour blur of running back and forth and catching moments of the game while on the sidelines, I suddenly found myself walking exhausted up the ramp with the last batch of memory cards while the final few seconds of the game ticked away behind me. I limped into the trailer, delivered the cards to Jim, and collapsed on a large camera box. After sitting there for about an hour eating everything within reach, I realized, just as Lou and I had earlier, that there was no reason for me to be sitting in a photo trailer when I could be sitting on the sidelines at Ford Field. I dragged myself back inside and soaked up what was left of the celebration:

There was quite a bit of confetti:

A very strange woman just dying to be photographed:

And a drunken Steelers fan who had fallen or jumped over the railing and onto the field (he’s the pair of legs underneath the red-jacketed security guy):

Most of all, however, there was a pervasive sense of ending. Great accomplishments had been wrought, amazing deeds done, champions crowned, and hundreds of millions of people entertained. But the spectacle had passed, the hour was late, and it was time to go:


I trudged back to the trailer, where I found Lou slumped on a pile of coats, wheezing and loudly demanding vicodin. After realizing that Jim still had a lot of work to do, we decided to go back into the stadium, just to sit in the stands and take it all in one last time. Life, however, has a way of reminding you of what’s what, and nudging you gently back into your place. Fifteen minutes after sitting down in the stands, we were asked to leave. The seating area was closed. I suppose we could have flashed our press passes and gotten our way, but when something is over, it is best to let it be over and love it for what it was. Lou and I had enjoyed several days of utter heaven, blessed with the paramount gift of access and the occasion of one of the greatest sporting events in the world. It had essentially been a vacation from reality. Now we were being kicked out. Two hours later, we were accosted by some drunken Steelers fans in an all-night diner, and the next day I got stuck in traffic for an hour and a half on the drive back home. No amount of displaying my press pass would get the cars moving. Real life rules were being enforced again.

I’ve been trying to come up with some grand life lesson to be gleaned from my four days at the Super Bowl, but I keep returning to two small truths. One, which I try never to forget, is that I am an incredibly lucky human being. The other is that amazing experiences aren’t required to have soul-stretching personal impact. Sometimes they’re just simply amazing, and that’s all that they need to be. If the memory of my Super Bowl is a blur of incredible images and moments accompanied by the simple but true repetition of “This is so cool,” then the experience was exactly what I wanted it to be.

[If you’d like to see all of the photos that I took on the day of the game, go here for the first gallery and here for the second one.]