Super Bowl at Large : In Owners’ Skyboxes, What’s a Menu Without Haute Dogs?

So you’re planning a Super Bowl party and are trying to figure out whether to go for the sour cream-and-onion potato chips or the jalapeno-flavored chips, and whether to stick a package of hot dogs in a sweet-and-sour sauce or go for the kielbasa instead?

Decisions, decisions. Take the easy way out and pattern your munchies menu after what the NFL football team owners will be enjoying in their San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium skyboxes on game day.

They, of anyone, would seem to be the ones to define a state-of-the-art football party menu. Heck, they own the game.

According to Barb Haug, catering sales director for Service America, the team owner skyboxes will be provided with starters of imported gourmet cheeses and fruits, and fresh vegetables.

Before the game, there will be a spread of smoked turkey, salami and roast beef finger sandwiches, on choice of Swiss, French, pumpernickel or rye breads, or croissants.

Pregame hot hors d’oeuvres will include spinach feta, Italian sausage and teriyaki chicken.

During the game, the finger sandwiches will be replaced with chicken salad, smoked salmon spread and corned beef on the same selection of breads, and a new offering of hors d’oeuvres will feature smoked Gouda, puffed pastry stuffed with pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes, German sausage and barbecued baby back ribs.

No mention of barbecued Fritos and beer.

Leon Parma was one of the San Diego businessmen who successfully campaigned for the NFL to grant San Diego a tryout at a Super Bowl, and now his company--Coast Distributing--is hustling around town, delivering Anheuser-Busch products to local taverns, liquor stores and supermarkets.

Business is super, thank you.

Jim Dierker, director of marketing for Coast, said his people called bartenders and liquor department managers in cities of past Super Bowls to get an idea of just how the beer business will boom over Super Bowl weekend, so that he could adequately stock his customers. State liquor laws ban Sunday liquor distribution, so there won’t be any emergency runs at halftime.

A New Orleans supermarket manager told Dierker that his beer sales increased by 400%.

The owner of O’Shea’s, an Irish pub in San Francisco, said he nearly ran out of Bud long-necks. “It was like St. Patrick’s Day for the whole week,” the fellow boasted.

A Pasadena bartender said his beer sales were up threefold.

And a Pasadena supermarket manager told Dierker, “You’ll have people tailgating everywhere--even in their driveways.”

For the first time ever, Irish television will be carrying the Super Bowl telecast live, picking up an ABC-TV feed.

Not that the Irish will lack some homespun pregame commentary.

This week, the Irish crew will be taping a telephone interview with San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor, to run during a pregame broadcast being produced in Ireland.

For video to complement the phone interview, the mayor was asked to quickly mail to the Irish TV studio a picture of her and her father, second-generation Irishman Jerome O’Connor.

Among the scores of private and public parties being staged during Super Week are any number of fund-raisers hoping to tap some of the Big Bucks coming to town this week. The Hall of Champions in Balboa Park on Thursday night, for instance, will be the scene of a celebrity auction to benefit the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation.

It is hoped that between $25,000 and $50,000 will be raised for the local chapter through bidding for such items as round-trip air fare to Paris with five-star hotel accommodations, a Goodyear blimp ride for six, and a 15-day cruise from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale.

Carole M. Ekstrom, associate director and chief fund-raiser for the Arthritis Foundation, said it was critical to the auction’s success that it somehow attach itself to the official NFL-Super Bowl coattails in order to capitalize on its Super Bowl logo.

So they worked a deal of sorts: If the Arthritis Foundation could provide enough volunteers to fill 12,000 red-white-and-blue balloons with helium--balloons that will take the form of the American Flag during the pregame show--then the charity could use the Super Bowl logo on its invitations for the auction.

About 200 volunteers will be showing up by bus at 7 a.m. at the stadium, and they’ll be out of there before kickoff--bussed back to the Town and Country, where they will be the NFL’s guests at a Super Bowl party for volunteers.

So how is Dan Fouts occupying himself this week, with his Chargers sitting in the stands instead of along the sidelines?

He’s covering the Super Bowl by providing sports coverage and commentary for KFMB Radio, KGTV (Channel 10) and ESPN.

“It’s a good way of keeping my mind off the Super Bowl,” he said.

Say what?

“It’ll be a lot more enjoyable than sitting around in front of the TV and being bombarded with all the hype,” he said. “At least this will keep my mind occupied.”