Watch the Super Bowl? I’ll Pass

Super Bowl XXXIII: That’s three X’s and three I’s but no dear, not these eyes.

It’s not that I set out to break any records. Now that I have, though, I’m not about to risk my title by doing something stupid. When you’re in a position like mine, you have to be careful; when you’re the only man in America who has never watched any of the XXXII Super Bowls past, you watch your step on the IVth Sunday of January.

Today, I won’t go to parties or bars. I won’t go to department stores, where every one of the dozens of big-screen TVs will be tuned to the Big Game. I will die a Super Bowl virgin. My gravestone will read: “He lived, he loved, he never watched the Super Bowl. Pass the nachos.�

I know I’ll miss out on some fine commercials, some good eats and some solid, shoulder-punching, belly-bucking male bonding. Throughout Ventura County, the pizza delivery places and supermarket delis are on high alert. By day’s end, tons of cold cuts, chicken wings and similar men’s nutrients will be consumed. An ocean of beer will gush down the hatch.

Verily, even some churches will get into the act. To promote fellowship, congregations in Ojai and Camarillo are throwing Super Bowl parties today.

(In fact, there are numerous scriptural references to football, starting with Genesis 7:10: “And so it came to pass....� The case is equally clear with this passage from the Apocrypha: “And on the seventh day, He rested, and partook of nachos, and gazed upon 100 cubits of lawn, and beat his breast, and rent his garments, and screamed at the TV with 150 million other true Americans.�)

Except for me.

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Why don’t I watch the Super Bowl?

The reasons are beyond number, but I’ll start with the numerals. With the exception of Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky� movies, no other public event in America comes with Roman numerals at the end to suggest its immense gravity.

That struck me as pompous even during the buildup to Super Bowl I, when I was a mere XVII.

As the years went on, I took a small pride in avoiding the Super Bowl--especially when I lived in Denver, where the Broncos were high priests and John Elway was a god.

I’d like to say that instead of watching the Super Bowl, I worked on my novel or cross-country skied through a trackless Colorado wilderness. But I didn’t. I suppose I took a walk or went to the movies. I just didn’t watch the Super Bowl.

When I married a woman who hates football, it seemed that destiny intended us to not watch the Super Bowl together, forever.

And we haven’t.

Jane has come to know my multitude of shortcomings. She knows my snoring and my snuffling and my grabbing the covers in the middle of the night. She knows my failure to take things seriously, to change the oil, to wash the dishes, to buckle down, to lighten up.

Once she crept up on me as I was drinking a beer and watching a football game.

“I was just on my way to the Home & Garden Channel,� I stammered.

But that was a youthful indiscretion. We both know that whatever rocky times we might go through, we’ll always not have the Super Bowl.

I’m not sure what we’ll do on this Super Bowl Sunday.

Maybe we’ll check out the nifty features on the new vacuum.

Maybe we’ll consider the ultimate “Does size matter?� question: Is Pluto too small to be a planet?

Maybe we’ll take a walk or see a movie.

Or maybe we’ll order some nachos and crack a couple of cold ones, and plan what we won’t be doing during Super Bowl XXXIV.

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is [email protected].