3 reasons why I didn’t watch Super Bowl 2017 on Sunday…

My husband and two of my sons were the reason I didn’t watch the Super Bowl Sunday night. Trust me; I wanted to watch it. I had spent part of my day wishing I lived in California just so that I could stay awake for the entire game. I spent another part of the day preparing food for it. Food that I ate — while not watching the Super Bowl at all.

Why, you ask? Three reasons: Adam, Ben, and Steve. (Son, son, and husband.)

“I know who won the Super Bowl,” my husband taunted at 4 Monday morning, when my alarm sounded and I left the bed reluctantly.

“So do I,” I retorted. “The Patriots.”

“How do you know?”

(He was clearly disappointed he didn’t get to enlighten me — or lord it over me that he knew and I didn’t.)

“Because Adam came and told me all the details sometime in the middle of the night.”

Steve, Adam, and I are Patriots fans. I’m not quite sure how that became a fact, as the closest I’ve ever been to New England is my Massachusetts-born brother-in-law Jeff. But we are avid fans, faithful believers in the innocence and superb skills of Tom Brady, but we were also smart enough to know that Matt Ryan and his Atlanta Falcons could pose a real threat on Super Bowl Sunday.

Reason #1: Adam

My youngest son, Adam, is a rabid Patriots fan. He’s got hats and T-shirts and an arsenal of statistics about the players and the team that makes me wonder why he isn’t a straight-A student in subjects other than football. He knows who is starting, who isn’t playing and why. He follows the news and sports shows and Twitter accounts as time allows, and I’m pretty sure he has gained a lot of followers of his own because of his tweets about the Patriots. Patriots are his passion.

Which means he also can be emotional if the Patriots aren’t playing well.

So Sunday morning, we discussed the possibility that the Falcons, indeed, could win, and Adam seemed to work through that. He offered himself some rationale for being OK no matter how the game went down.

“It’s cool,” my youngest son said. “Atlanta is representing the Southeast. I can dwell on that.” (We live in the Southeast, so that rationale could work.)

We were concerned for Adam because of Ben.

Reason #2: Ben

My son Ben is a fan of whomever the Patriots are playing — just to annoy Adam. He admits this with a broad smile. (When he was young, he insisted on being a Florida State University fan in a house full of Florida Gators, just because he enjoys being contrary.) As my husband and I discussed food options prior to the Super Bowl, we also discussed who to invite — and we knew that inviting Ben was inviting trouble. So we didn’t.

He saved us the trouble. Ben invited himself.

“Where are you watching the game?” I’d asked my second oldest son the day before.

“Here,” he said.

And that was that.

Watching a game with Adam by himself would have been OK. But the combination of Patriot fan Adam and Falcon-rooting Ben was too much of a risk.

Reason #3: Steve

So once the food was prepared and served, I watched a couple minutes of the game with the boys and then headed down to the other end of the house to watch the Super Bowl with my husband in relative peace.

Except that he turned on “Call the Midwife.”

Um. What?

At my request, he switched to the game, which he’d set to record, started it at the beginning, but then began fast-forwarding through not just commercials but also through any commentary, hitting normal speed just for the plays and then fast-forwarding again. (My husband routinely recorded the NFL RedZone during regular season play and fast-forwarded then, too. Watching the station on regular speed gave me ADD. Watching it with my husband merely drove me crazy.)

“If that’s how you’re going to watch this game, then switch it back to ‘Call the Midwife,'” I groaned.

Hence, my husband was Reason #3 that I did not watch the Super Bowl Sunday night.

Instead we went to one non-eventful TV show to another while the Patriots suffered blow after blow from the Falcons (and themselves). We saw the score of the game from the real event of the evening when we returned to the kitchen at half time to clean up. It was a blow-out.

“I’m glad we didn’t waste time watching that,” Steve said.

“Well, the game isn’t over. Maybe they’ll kick it into gear and get the game back,” I suggested, always the optimist.

“I saw how much time was left,” pessimist Steve said. “They don’t have time.”

We finally turned off the lights about 9 p.m., leaving the Patriots to their apparent fate.

At 10, Steve went down the other end of the house and came back to the bedroom, awakening me to tell me the Patriots had done the miraculous and had tied the game. The Super Bowl was going into overtime.

I knew then the Patriots would likely win it. Momentum was on their side.

Within 15 minutes real time, the team had won an incredible victory while I fought to get back to sleep. Sometime much later, when the celebrating via the TV was over, Adam thoughtfully awakened me to let me know the result.

I had missed one of the most exciting Super Bowls of all time, thanks to Adam, Ben, and Steve — and I didn’t have to stay up to watch the entire game to lose sleep. I could blame loss of sleep on at least two of those “reasons” as well.

Epilogue:

On Monday, knowing the outcome of the game, I sat and watched the Super Bowl from the moment the comeback began to the celebrating at the end. (It was actually much less painful that way, skipping the dicey first half and, especially, knowing the end from the beginning. I think there might be a sermon in that. *Spoiler alert: God always wins.)

P.S. My husband actually slowed his Monday viewing of the Super Bowl long enough to see a commercial, which he then made a point of showing me. He prefaced it with, “You’re in the commercial by name, and you’ll never guess who I am in it.” He was right. I never would have guessed.

Guess which commercial he meant? What was your favorite commercial, I mean, if you had no “reasons” preventing you from watching the big game?