Ski ski ski ski ski

Why I Love Football

By Tomi Owens, 2-02-07

An ode to football. Photos courtesy of Tim Wilson
Last year’s Super Bowl was watched by 141.4 million viewers. Super Bowl Monday, a grass-roots political campaign, is urging voters to write congress to make Super Bowl Sunday a new National Holiday, with “observation on Monday following the big game.” A day of rest and remembrance for the American sport finale which “has gained a significance that transcends the game itself.”

It is a shared, national event for goodness sake!

Here are a few Super Bowl habits collected by sports writer James Adler.
• There are 7.5 million parties on Super Bowl Sunday, with 43.9 million party-goers (National Retail Federation)
• 1.5 million TV sets will be sold the week leading up to the Super Bowl (National Retail Federation)
• Sales of big screen TVs show a fivefold increase during Super Bowl week (National Electronic Dealers Association)
• Super Bowl is the top at-home party event of year, ahead of New Year’s Eve (Hallmark Cards, Inc.)
• Average Number of Attendees for a Super Bowl party is 17 (Hallmark)
• On Super Bowl Sunday, Americans consume 8 million pounds of guacamole (California Avocado Commission)
• Estimated 14,500 tons of chips and 4,000 tons of popcorn eaten on Super Bowl Sunday (multiple sources)
I love football for the skiing. I have made a point of getting up to the mountain every Sunday for the last month. And have not been disappointed. Virtually empty parking lots, no lift lines to speak of, wide open groomers and the fresh powder stashes if you know where to look.

According to Jeremy Riss, Mt. Hood Meadows Ski and Snowboard School Manager: “attendance is always low during the playoffs and of those that show up about half quit early to a watch the game in the bar.”

Allow me a moment of superfluous discourse:

Chill air huddles under the weighty Gorge inversion. Bundle up, snap skis on the roof rack, pile in and drive through the brown boned orchards which give way abruptly to great walls of green pine and sliver tipped fir. And then up through the winding valley of the Hood’s East Fork, twisting between a thousand frozen waterfalls, their motionless tumult towering above the raucous river. Like hope incarnate, sunshine begins to filter through the gloom. In a heartbeat Mount Hood’s steep flanks fill the foreground and clear blue sky, the first I’ve seen for days, open above.

After the morning has slid dreamily by we sit on deck chairs outside the Mazot hut, clutching steaming cups of mulled wine, and gaze away south at Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters rising like islands from a creamy sea of clouds. Sprawled across the fine grained snow, with our faces turned eagerly to the sun, we are a sensory negative of tropical holiday makers sipping Sangria on a black sand beach. 
And when we are warmed, cheered and rested—its back to the slopes to carve uninterrupted S-curves on edge-to-edge corduroy and float the big green rollers sans gapers, jibbers, newbies and dweebs.

Yes, indeedy! I LOVE FOOTBALL.

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