Super Bowl not so super to some

Parties, food, sociailizing take center stage for non-sports fans

Hundreds of millions of Americans and others worldwide have turned Super Bowl Sunday into an impromptu holiday. And why not? It’s the biggest game of the year for the most popular sport in the country. It has something for everyone: amazing athletes, popular music, celebrity star power. Everyone’s at a bar, a friend’s house or at home to take in the big game. Well, not everyone. Some people have to travel or work during the Super Bowl, which could come as a big disappointment — if they cared, that is.

“I’m mostly just upset about missing all the Super Bowl parties,” said Irene Eric, 23, of Charleston, S.C., while waiting for her

5:15 p.m. Sunday flight out of Pittsburgh International Airport to Charlotte, N.C., home of the Carolina Panthers.

Being from the Carolinas makes Ms. Eric a de facto Carolina Panthers fan, although she admittedly is not a passionate one. But she lamented being stuck on planes and in cars on a day when she would normally be drinking beer and eating chicken wings, just like her traveling companion, Macy McComb.

“A lot of our friends are watching it on the TV and making food,” said Ms. McComb, 21, also of Charleston. “We’re missing out on the whole day.”

Ms. Eric and Ms. McComb are just two beneficiaries of modern-day Super Bowl hysteria: Even if a person doesn’t have a vested interest in the game, the atmosphere around the game generates more than enough entertainment to please. In footballcrazy Pittsburgh, everyone has plans for the Super Bowl, whether the Steelers are in it or not. Right? Maybe not. Vince McClintock, 47, of Delmont was among a group of four men waiting for a flight to Charlotte on the night of the Super Bowl for what was a pre-planned business trip. The game didn’t much matter to Mr. McClintock without the Steelers in it.

“When it’s baseball season and the Pirates aren’t playing, I don’t watch, and when the Penguins aren’t playing, I don’t watch hockey,” he said.

Kyle Kinsella, 24, who was working behind the counter of Smithfield News, Downtown, during the Super Bowl, was perhaps the perfect person to be working during the game.

Mr. Kinsella said he played football as a kid all the way through high school, but he can’t stand the commercialized beast that the NFL has become.

“My goal is everyone who talks to me about the Super Bowl, I’m going to talk [smack] on the Super Bowl,” he said.

He allowed the game to be played on the flat screen TV in the store, but just for the customers who might be interested in the biggest football game of the year.

“Last week, we didn’t have the game on,” he said, “because we were watching ‘American Dad.’ ”