Food, Football, and Fun

Across America and the world, Super Bowl Sunday is synonymous with good food, good friends, and of course, good football. YU is no different. On Sunday January 25, 1998, over 300 students flooded Belfer Hall’s Weisberg Commons, a room generally assoc iated with lectures and formal dinners, for the big game. On that famed Sunday, the Commons belonged to the dedicated students who have tracked the NFL’s top teams for the past six months.

Coordinated by YCSC and the Office of Student Services, the second annual YU Dougie's Super Bowl Party gave students the game on a big screen, a chance to watch and cheer in a crowd atmosphere, and of course, free victuals from Dougie's.

Rav Blau began the evening by addressing the crowd. He delivered a powerful message on the difference between the Jewish perspective on life and that of a football player. With Rav Blau’s opening remarks coming to a close, the smell of a few thousand buffalo wings permeating the room, and that ever evasive kickoff time becoming inevitably closer, the intensity in the room began to pick up. Talk of who would emerge victorious, what the commercials would be like, and when the grub would be served spre ad wildly around the room.

After an exciting first half of competition and a frenzied feeding experience during half time, the crowd settled in for the second half. John Elway marched the Denver Broncoes down field in the closing moments of the game. Poetically enough the game ’s MVP, Turrel Davis, after crossing the goal line twice before on the same drive only to have the touchdowns rescinded due to penalties, triumphantly marched into the endzone for the game’s wining score.

As the last seconds ticked off the clock, the field and the room were filled with emotion. Then, in that one brief moment, it was all over. For some, months of anticipation, preparation, and hard work all disappeared as the game clock ran off its fin al second. But other reveled in their new found victorythe mood was the other extreme. For them, screaming was the only way to express their excitement.