Super Bowl Sunday/Monday in Sao Paulo

The following is a column I wrote for the IDS this week that never ran. Oh well. If you want an update on my travels see the post below. If you want to read about my professional soccer experience click here. Happy Super Bowl Day!

I fell in love at a young age. Nine years-old to be axact. That`s when I discovered football could be fun.

It was an innocent love at first growing out of recess interceptions and backyard hail marys, but the affection quickly spread to the living room on Sunday afternoons. That`s where I met the Chicago Bears. They were mean and tough - just like I wanted to be, and it seemed like they measured victory not by the count of the scoreboard but by how dirty there jerseys were at the end of the game.

I bought a Bears hooded sweatshirt shortly after we were introduced and wore it to every neighborhood game of tackle football. It sometimes took three or four of my friends to take me down in that sweatshirt. Oftentimes they would give up tackling me and wait to two-hand tap me on the cement of the driveway. If only teams could have used that tactic against bruisers like Refrigerator Perry on the goal line.

Not long after hitting it off with the Bears, I bumped into the Indianapolis Colts one Sunday. They weren`t particularly intimidating or flashy, but they lived just as close to my home in northeast Indiana and who doesn`t love an underdog? I can still remember our inaugural season.

They had a running back named Marshall that knew how to get that extra yard and a quarterback named Jim who played so well at the end of games people started to call him Captain Comeback, like he was a super hero in tights. I fell hard for Captain Comeback and the Colts that year. I even asked for a Colts wintercoat for Christmas which I wore until the white horshoe turned yellow.

Sundays became a competition for attention between my two midwestern mates. Who was putting up the most points? Who had the best chance to make the playoffs? Who had the most exciting players? I never went a week of the NFL season without a game to look forward to.

Still, even though I came to know both teams intimately, season after season ended in disappointment. The Bears normally blew it early in the regular season and hibernated in January. The Colts seasons tended to fizzle in the postseason - a couple times in Foxboro against those pesky Patriots.

There were still positives to take my mind off the present troubles of my teams. For the Bears it was their past, their vaunted history full of legends like George ¨Papa Bear¨ Halas, Dick Butkus and Walter Payton - men that seemed larger than Soldier Field itself. For the Colts it
was their future, for the promise of a young man born to play quarterback named Peyton and a defense that could only improve from the previous season. For both teams it was the thought that next year could be the year - HAD to be the year.

Then a funny thing happened this season. The Bears and Colts started the season winning. 7-0 and 9-0 to begin the season, respectively. They faltered slightly in the latter part of the season - just enough for people to doubt. When the playoffs began, however, they were on their games. The Bears advanced to their first Super Bowl in 22 years in classic fashion - with sloppy weather and a blistering defense. The Colts advance to their first Super Bowl since arriving in Indianapolis by cleaning out every skeleton that hid in their closet with a thrilling comeback victory over New England. Now, the two teams that I`ve grown so close to over the years are meeting in Miami for Super Bowl XLI and I should be walking on air, but another funny thing had happened. I left.

A month ago, I boarded a plane headed to South America to study a semester in Brazil and expand my horizons beyond Sunday afternoon heartbreakers and Monday Night Football miracles. Both of my teams had been punchless in the playoffs for so long I thought I could get away from them for a spell without missing anything sensational. I was wrong.

I watched the conference championships of my respective teams without anyone to embrace and with Brazilian announcers using words like ¨incompleto¨ after an errant Rex Grossman pass and ¨Maravilhoso!¨ after a diving Dallas Clark reception. Luckily, a fumble in Portuguese needs no translation.

And so this Sunday, I will watch the Super Bowl of my dreams with ¨saudade¨, a word Brazilians use to mean a feeling of yearning or longing. If absence makes the heart grow fonder then I have never felt more connected to the beasts of Super Bowl XLI.