By the time the confetti cannons blast down on Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on Sunday night, you will have realized that you just had the best Super Bowl viewing experience of your life. You might think to yourself that COVID-19 ruined Super Bowl parties this year, but in reality, it saved you from them.
Let’s cut right to the chase: Super Bowl parties secretly suck.
They’re almost as bad as work happy hours and the movie Cats, only both of those things end within two hours.
This year, you won’t have felt pressured to go to an awful party hosted by someone you either barely know or actively dislike. No longer must you deal with the absolutely cartoonish creatures who glom onto Super Bowl parties like remora fish, sucking down cold wings and touching all over the couch with their stained fat fingers.
These characters exist solely to punish you. There’s the obnoxious guy wearing a jersey of a player who murdered three people screaming at the TV like he’s in Uncut Gems because he’s about to lose a $5 parlay. Standing next to him are the people who interrupt every 15 seconds to tell the room what formation the offense is in because they think they know more about football than Pop Warner. And let’s not forget the contrarian in the corner, who laments the dangers of such a barbarous game between e-cigarette puffs that fog up the room like the pregame entrance. This year is about safely reclining in your La-Z-Boy with a smile. Without parties, these people have been relegated to Twitter, where they can disappear into the digital ether.
In fact, there may be no going back to Super Bowl parties as usual after everyone has realized they don’t have to perform the ritual of watching the big game in a freezing garage with the people they pretend are their friends.
There’s no need to pay attention to the awful commercials if you don’t want to, either. Most years, you’re forced to stay silent during breaks in the game or risk getting yelled at by someone because he or she just has to see what Doritos does with Weird Al. But admit it: Super Bowl commercials are almost universally terrible, and there’s no use pretending they’re funny. We pretend Saturday Night Live is funny, but at least it actually has a decent musical guest every once in a while.
No-party Super Bowls also allow you to ignore the halftime music. The halftime show is usually a stilted performance by someone who was famous six or more years ago lip-syncing a song that you first heard while shopping at TJ Maxx. Without a party, you can use halftime as God intended: to restock your beer supply or order some food that’s actually warm when you go to put it in your mouth.
This brings me to the food. Super Bowl party food is almost always room-temperature slop that you plop onto a stale Triscuit. You politely chew three pieces of balsa wood topped with Rotel dip until it’s all gone and you’re stuck sucking on a celery stick like the host’s pet rabbit.
There’s usually one good dish, but whatever it is, it’s gone in the first hour, leaving you with the traditional party standards: pizza and wings. Cold pizza is great. One slice of cold pizza surrounded by 13 drunk people who all have to be at work in 12 hours is just a decent draw in one of Dante’s layers of hell.
We must face our grim reality head-on and without blinders. Super Bowl parties have always been devastatingly overrated, and this year gave you a reason to put them to bed for good.
So when Super Bowl LVI comes around next year, pour yourself a stiff glass of the good stuff. Order some food you actually want, and eat it all in one sitting. Enjoy the biggest football game of the year in peace and harmony, without a terrible party and the sad vibes it emits.
You can even watch a commercial or two if you so bravely choose. Just take heed of the lesson you learned in 2021: Super Bowl parties are pretty bad, and they always have been.
We can all raise a Triscuit to that.
Cory Gunkel is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
