The football game was 10 miles and seven hours away. Time to go.
But this was no ordinary event. Getting to a Super Bowl is not as simple as hopping in your car and driving there.
I didn’t have a parking permit. I didn’t want to spend $100 to park one mile away, so I headed to downtown Phoenix to catch a shuttle to the game.
Going through security took nearly an hour, but it’s necessary in this day and age. A line for bag searches led to another line for pat-downs, which led to another line for metal detectors.
Finally inside the stadium, I found my seat in the upper deck above a corner of the “Seahawks” end zone. The regular press box is too small to hold the hordes of media here, so tables were placed over two sections in the upper deck.
The first thing that struck me was the color of the field — a rich kelly green without a divot or imperfection. After warmups, a swarm of groundskeepers picked up every divot or uprooted blade of grass.
As fans began filing in, it was immediately clear this would be a pro-Seahawks crowd. Seahawks gear outnumbered Patriots jerseys 3-to-1. The more the stadium filled up, the more it felt like a Seahawk home game.
And it was loud. A complaint of most Super Bowls is how sanitized and corporate the atmosphere is. As I type this, my ears are ringing as if I’d been to a rock concert.
Looking back at the past week, one thing stands out. The amount of manpower, money and coordination required to make a Super Bowl happen is mind-boggling.
The ending might be hard to stomach for Seahawks fans. But I hope everyone who made the trip relished the spectacle that is the nation’s largest event.
