Tips on Avoiding Next Year’s Super Headache

Is it too late?

Are we stuck with having Super Bowl XXII in Mission Valley?

Maybe I have just been overwhelmed and worn down by all of the hype over this year’s game at Pasadena. I have heard and read all I care to hear and read about Super Bowl XXI. In fact, I was overdosed by the beginning of the week.

I feel as if I have been served about 10 seven-course dinners without being allowed to leave the table.

After another dose of Lawrence Taylor is the greatest and John Elway is the greatest and either Dan Reeves or Bill Parcells will be this year’s genius, I cringe when someone says something like: “Just think, the Super Bowl will be here next year.”

Stuffed beyond satiety, I react as I would react at about the time the second seven-course meal landed in my lap.

“Right now,” I say, “it doesn’t sound too good.”

Maybe it will sound better when I get this one digested. The thought of another such orgy will be much more positive when time has passed and I have forgotten what an unabashed orgy it really is.

Regardless, I realize it is too late. Super Bowl XXII is coming. Like a tidal wave.

There must be ways to capitalize on this foolish exercise in excess. There must be ways to prepare for what likely will be the most ridiculous week to 10 days in the history of our tranquil city.

A few enterprises come to mind . . .

Buy as many tickets as possible and resell them: OK, so what if this is perhaps the world’s second-oldest profession? So what if folks who do this are known ingloriously as scalpers?

People really want to sit in the stadium to see this game. They want to involve themselves in a traffic jam to park and a traffic jam to visit a restroom and a traffic jam to get a hot dog and a traffic jam to leave.

The game? They see bits and pieces of it, but that’s not the point. The point is to have the Super Bowl experience.

After the game, these fans go home and turn on their VCRs so they can converse intelligently with colleagues who stayed home and actually saw the game.

Buy a fleet of limousines, or at least a pedicab: Transportation will be in great demand. High-rollers do not like to stoop to driving their own rental cars or having to choke on a cab driver’s cigar smoke.

They want to climb into a sleek limo and say: “Jeeves, to the stadium.”

Folks like this have images to project . . . and protect. It just wouldn’t do for the chief executive officer of one beer company to be getting out of a cab when a vice-president from a competitor arrives in a limousine behind him.

A pedicab would be a reasonably economical alternative, because these men are power brokers. They would feel equally good knowing that someone is working so hard to get them where they are going.

Pete Rozelle, for example, would love to arrive in a pedicab driven by Al Davis.

Buy a saloon near the media hotel: This one is a sure-fire way to make a fast buck. Understand that these poor wretches are dragged around in buses (not limos or pedicabs) from interview room to interview room. They listen all day to athletes grumbling and belching, trying to take notes on sounds that are not really words and then make sense of them in a story.

These fellows are known to develop thirsts. Prey on them.

Buy a restaurant near the teams’ hotels: This suggestion comes with a warning you should underline in red. Don’t offer anything like an “all you can eat” buffet. National Football League teams have players who would sit down at the buffet itself and ask what everyone else was supposed to eat.

Build a golf course: These visitors will need something to do between brunch and cocktail parties. They won’t be the type to get to Torrey Pines at 4 a.m., like us mortals, and drink coffee for four hours while waiting for an opening. They will want to roll up in their limos (or pedicabs) and hit the ball.

This sounds like it might be an expensive undertaking, but it really isn’t anymore. All you need these days are sand, railroad ties, a few puddles of water and about three boxes of grass seed. Voila ! Instant legend.

Rent the family home and spend the week in Puerto Vallarta: Ah, this may be the best idea of the bunch. Anything with a roof, running water and a VCR would likely be gobbled up for maybe $1,000 a week by visitors clamoring for a place to stay. Demand should be so great that you won’t have to rent to the University of Miami defensive line.

So you take the money--cash, cashier’s check or money order--and head for P.V. You spend a serene week poolside, giggling about your resourcefulness and foresight.

Come Super Sunday, you will be ready. You go to Carlos O’Brien’s and watch a football game. That’s all it really is. A football game. Your interest will be fresh, your appetite undiminished by the glut and gluttony of football back home.

Besides, you’ll be about as close to the game itself as most of us here in San Diego are likely to get.

Just because it’s our turn to throw the party doesn’t mean we’ll be invited.