It's almost fucking here! I can't believe the anticipation. It has been utterly tearing me up inside. And as we count down the hours--we're inside 60 as I write--I want to take a moment to sufficiently reflect on the enormity of the game that is about to happen.
As I've said before, football is an emotion. In Packers fans--particularly right now--its the emotion, truly one of the driving forces of our being. And now, we are extremely fortunate to be able to watch our Pack take on Big Ben and the Steelers to decide Super Bowl XLV.
Sunday it will have been 4,760 days since the last time we were able to experience the emotion of football at this high a level. That was in the lead up to Super Bowl XXXII, which we lost to Elway's Broncos. It will have been 5,124 days on Sunday since we Packer fans have experienced the ultimate triumph, and thus the ultimate high in the emotion of football. And if we lose, that counter keeps right on ticking at 5,125 on Monday. May sound like just a number in those terms, but consider this: Every day that passes and adds to that streak represents another day that at least a few lifelong Packers fans die, never seeing another championship for their team.
My grandmother, 82, could soon be one of them. She's defied the odds to get to this point, and I can't help the feeling that holding on to try and see her team (she is a lifelong, and notoriously rabid Packer Backer even in failing health) win the Super Bowl one last time could be as big a factor as any in her being here today.
I'll never forget the sadness in her voice after we lost in the first round last year to the Cardinals--it was almost as if she was saying, "I don't know how many more of these I got in me." It was crushing. And now, we're here. At the verge. Flirting with that return to eternal greatness. It could not mean any more to me, my grandmother, my family, friends, or Packer Nation at large. It is everyfuckingthing: the reason they put on the pads day one.
It is taking everything I have to restrain the football currently trapped in my body from blasting through my fingers and typing for pages SUPER FUCKING BOWL! THE FUCKING SUPER BOWL! SUPER BOWL BITCHES! FUCKING SUPER BOWL! SUPERFUCKINGBOWL! Etc. The football is thick in the air here in Western Wisconsin and indeed in the entire state and nation at large as we anticipate the biggest game of the year. An unrestrained glee links all cheeseheads, no matter how different or far apart. It represents a pinnacle of solidarity.
When it's all said and done, I may just throw up blood from the ulcer it's all caused, but it will be fucking worth it.
GO PACK!
*image from brentfavre.com
