Super Bowl Sunday the Way It Oughta Be

It’s the biggest football day of the year—you don’t want to screw it up. Use our handy guide to see that you don’t.
By Drew Magary • Illustrations by Tom Richmond

THE SUPER BOWL KICKS OFF ON FEBRUARY 7TH! Yeehaw! Whoohoo! Someone give me a hooker to slap and a gun to shoot in the air, because Super Bowl Sunday is fucking fantastic. It’s got everything any good holiday needs: liquor, gluttony, football, a complete absence of religious significance, and gambling. It’s tremendous. In fact, I’ve long argued that the Super Bowl should be played on a weekday, so that men from all walks of life can take the day off from work in order to get drunk, snort Buffalo-wing sauce, and revel in the footbally footballness of our holiest football day.

Right about now, every magazine is offering you tips on how to host the perfect Super Bowl party. Onion dip? In a hollowed-out bread bowl? That’s crazy. The truth is, only a fool hosts his own Super Bowl party. You should never do it, ever. Instead, for the perfect Super Sunday, I suggest that you follow this very special itinerary that I have devised for you.

9:00 A.M. Wake up to piss. Piss while scat-singing the “Free Bird” guitar solo.

9:05 A.M. Walk back to bed, check calendar. Realize it’s Super Bowl Sunday! Fuck and yes. You can’t believe they pushed the game back to February. It doesn’t even feel like February when they’re playing the Super Bowl, does it? That horrible dead period after the game has ended? Where you walk outside and you feel like you’re on the set of The
Road? That’s real February. This is more like an extension of January.

9:08 A.M. Back to bed!

9:15 A.M. You can’t sleep. The game is only nine hours away! You can hardly contain yourself. You go to the computer and look at porn, and try to hold out your nut for as long as you can, in order to waste as much time as possible. You last all of five minutes, so you rub out eight more.

9:55 A.M. Breakfast! Cereal and Buffalo wings. All meals on this day must feature wings as a side dish. When you wash your hands on Super Bowl Sunday, please do so with Frank’s RedHot Sauce.

10:00 A.M. Hey, look! It’s Mike Lupica on The Sports Reporters! Fuck Mike Lupica.

10:30 A.M. Consult Bodog on all viable Super Bowl prop bets. Mark the ones that look interesting to you. An over/under of 14 points combined in the first quarter? Pfft. Clearly, Vegas knows nothing about gambling. Teams are jittery at the start of every Super Bowl. The under for you! It can’t possibly lose!

11:00 A.M. Devise an elaborate fourway parlay bet. All that needs to happen is: The coin toss must be heads, one of the jets flying above Land Shark Stadium must have a blue trail of smoke coming out behind it, the National Anthem must take longer than two minutes, and then the first touchdown must be scored on an interception return that features a
lateral. If all those things happen (and they will), you are a thousandaire. Call a bookie. Devise a new life in British Columbia should your bet fail.

11:20 A.M. Christ, it’s not even noon yet. Better start drinking. No, wait: Better continue drinking.

11:30 A.M. Bong hit.

11:35 A.M. Bong hit.

11:40 A.M. Bong hit.

11:30 A.M. Hey, how come you just traveled ten minutes back in time? Stupid weed.

12:00 P.M. Think about working out.

12:01 P.M. Fuck that.

12:02 P.M. Lunchtime! Wings. Pizza. And pizza topped with wings.

12:30 P.M. Rank, in your head, the greatest Super Bowls of all time. Everyone does this every year. But your list, of course, is definitive.

1:15 P.M. Oh, hey! It’s Chris Berman on ESPN’s pregame show! Fuck Chris Berman.

2:05 P.M. Nap time!

4:00 P.M. Oh man, where are you? What time is it? What day is it? Are you in your bed, or is this Grandma’s house? No, wait…. The game!

4:05 P. M.Shower!

5:00 P.M. Off to your friend Jim’s Super Bowl party. Good ol’ Jim. Every year, he buys all kinds of fancy beer. He makes two kinds of chili, orders giant sub sandwiches, lays out all the chips, and checks the oven in the middle of the second quarter to see if the Trader Joe’s spanakopita he bought is golden brown on the outside. And when you leave, he gets to clean it all up. Just so he can tell people he throws a Super Bowl party every year. What a sucker.

5:05 P.M. Eateateateateat. And continue drinking.

6:28 P.M. Kickoff! Some asshole hipster in the corner is talking to some other asshole hipster in the corner about books and stuff. Who invited these people? Why did they come if they don’t like football? Ban these fuckers.

6:29 P.M. The first ad. You are under – whelmed. Prepare to be underwhelmed by a thousand more $5-million fucked-by-committee commercials during the telecast.

6:36 P.M. Every part of your prop bet is wrong already. Fuck Earth.

7:12 P.M. Hey, this game kinda blows.

8:15 P.M. It’s the Who. Remember when Roger Daltrey wasn’t tone deaf? That was fun.

9:06 P.M. Whoa … feeling kinda bloated here. All that beer. All that hot sauce. It’s like a bubbling cauldron in your
large intestine. What’s that? Tray of nachos fresh out of the oven? Score.

9:25 P.M. You know, for pumping out three kids, Jim’s wife has a pretty decent ass. Have 30-second sexual fantasy about Jim’s wife. Tell no one, ever.

9:40 P.M. Hey, this game’s starting to get interesting….

9:55 P.M. Two minutes left! Holy shit! They couldn’t possibly pull it ou—

10:05 P.M. Touchdown! What a game! And you won Jim’s Super Bowl boxes! Plus, you got to dream-bang his old lady. Score for you!

10:30 P.M. Go to Jim’s bathroom. Shit in his toilet, then throw up in it.

11:00 P.M. Get kicked out of Jim’s house. Report to bar. Continue drinking alone for reasons that escape you.

2:05A.M. Pass out in nearby alleyway, fingers orange from wing binge. Savor this day, friend. It only comes but once a year.