Super Bowl Sunday Desecrations: Many Were Unglued to Tube

It may be an unpatriotic admission in a nation where one NBC sportscaster called Super Bowl Sunday “the one day of the year when more Americans are brought together for a single event than any other,” but not everyone likes football.

You read it right. Not everyone likes football . By the time Jan. 26 dawned--and it really dawned, with ESPN starting its NFL highlights broadcast at 5 a.m.--some people were actually tired of hearing Jim McMahon strut and fret his hour upon the stage and didn’t care whether Tony Eason still had a slight fever and some congestion in his chest.

Some people don’t even know who McMahon and Eason are. Honest. All of which proves that there is life away from the television set on Super Bowl Sunday. Not much, but who’s counting? NBC officials were counting, all the way up to 120 million--which was the smug estimation of their viewing audience.

But the Census Bureau was counting, too, and according to those fine federal folks, that leaves an estimated 115.1 million Americans nowhere near Channel 4 and the High Mass of the Sports World. Orange County streets and freeways may have been as barren as the day after the proverbial nuclear winter, but some hardy souls were out there shopping. Some sailed, some washed their cars, roller-skated, bicycled.

George and Marilyn Loudermilk of Costa Mesa spent the third quarter of the Bears-Patriots game standing in the Mesa Verde Shopping Center with their dog, Heidi, who was awaiting a rabies shot with dozens of other whimpering hounds.

Theirs was not a spontaneous desecration of this Sacred Sports Sunday. No, the Loudermilks called ahead and actually arranged to have their four-month-old Chihuahua-whippet blend vaccinated while the Bears were devouring the stunned Eastern team.

Even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered much, George said: “I watched the first part of the game and fell asleep. I think the score was 20-3.” He dozed off because “it was one-sided from what I saw, and I really didn’t care to start with.” Hell hath no fury like a Rams fan scorned.

And then there were 18-year-old Tina Boeckeler and Dan Whelchel, 20, out sunning themselves on the empty sands of Newport Beach on this uncommonly warm day. Boeckeler was spurning the game because “I don’t like football,” she said, her voice tinged with annoyance. “I think it’s kind of stupid--a bunch of grown men chasing after a ball and fighting over it.”

But why wasn’t Whelchel glued in front of the tube with a brew? “Cause I, uh, wanted to spend the day with her,” the Arizona resident said. “Besides, I wanted New England to win. It went to Chicago’s head. They’re just so stuck up about it, so I wanted to see them lose.”

No, lightning did not strike the beachgoers for their blasphemy. And Whelchel and Boeckeler were not the only ones to give football a bad rap.

Sports commentator Dick Enberg may have gushed during the pre-game show about the “millions of us fitting together in this uniquely American mosaic” watching Super Bowl XX, but 29-year-old Jeff Gillarde yanked his tile out of Enberg’s mosaic when he skimmed down the Newport Beach bike path somewhere between the first and second quarters.

“I’m not a football fan,” said the Costa Mesa man. “I’m not into spectator sports. I just wasn’t raised that way; it’s not in my blood. I play tennis, have a bike for the beach. I was going to watch with some friends, but I’m just kind of glad we didn’t get together.

“Besides,” he said, as he remounted his battered 10-speed, while glancing at the smooth, clear sands, “it really doesn’t seem to be that crowded today, so I’m taking advantage of it.”

Yorba Linda residents Marga and Anna Rodriguez and Ramon Ruiz also found that Super Bowl Sunday was a perfect day for horseback riding along the deserted streets of Placentia. And they all had practically the same reason for their bias:

“I don’t like football, ‘cause I like horses,” said Marga, 17.

“I don’t like football,” said Anna, 26. “It’s too much violence. I think it’s overpublicized.”

“I don’t like it,” said Ruiz, 25, “but if it was a horse show, I’d be up there.”

(There were scattered reports Sunday afternoon of interruptions in cable television service at the beginning of the Super Bowl broadcast in some coastal areas of the south county. No representatives of the cable service could be reached for comment.)

By the end--or was it the middle, the beginning maybe--of Super Bowl XX, the staunch East Coasters at Paddington’s Railroad Inn may have considered a switch to horseback riding, too, because bebeing a Patriots fan was not quite what it was cracked up to be.

Sure, they celebrated during the heady first minutes of the game, the few seconds when the Patriots were ahead, 3-0. They were still hopeful when the Bears, too, scored a field goal. After all, it was only a field goal.

“Whoo, whoo,” crowed Dick Pond, a transplanted Bostonian. “We’re gonna win this game.” A hastily printed sign outside the New England sea food restaurant read, “Due to limited seating capacity, you must have a ticket for today’s event. Closed Party.” The bar was festooned with red, white and blue streamers and balloons, Narragansett lager was the drink of the day, and for a few moments, anything seemed possible.

But then someone sacked quarterback Tony Eason, and the score began its inevitable slide. “We’re not doing so good,” moaned Nancy Pond, an occasional waitress at this small piece of Cape Cod-on-the-Pacific. “You walked in at the wrong time.”

But then she brightened. “The (Boston) Celtics won this morning against the (Philadelphia) 76ers,” she said confidently. “New England will win this afternoon.”

If she had only known.