Death to the Super Bowl Party

This column was written before Super Bowl LV.

By the time the confetti cannons blast down onto Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on Sunday night, you will have realized that you just had the best Super Bowl viewing experience of your life. You might think to yourself that COVID ruined Super Bowl parties this year, but in reality, it saved you from them.

Let’s cut right to the chase here: Super Bowl parties secretly suck.

They’re almost as bad as work happy hours and the movie Cats, only both of those things end within two hours.

This year, you won’t feel pressured to go to an awful party hosted by someone you either barely know or actively dislike. No longer must you deal with the absolutely cartoonish creatures who glob onto Super Bowl parties like remora fish, sucking down cold wings and touching all over the couch with their stained fat fingers.

These characters exist solely to punish you. There’s the obnoxious guy wearing a jersey of a player who murdered three people screaming at the TV like he’s in Uncut Gems because he’s about to lose a $5 parlay. Standing next to him is the person who interrupts every fifteen seconds to tell the room what formation the offense is in because they think they know more about football than Pop Warner. And let’s not forget the group contrarian in the corner, who laments the dangers of such a barbarous game between e-cigarette puffs that fog up the room like the pregame entrance. You can safely recline in your La-Z-Boy with a smile knowing you’ve eliminated these people from your life by leaving Super Bowl parties behind you. Without a party, they’re relegated to Twitter, where they can disappear into the digital ether.

Your Super Bowl experience can be as peaceful as you like, and there’s no going back once you realize you don’t have to perform the American ritual of watching the big game in a freezing garage with the people you pretend are your friends.

No need to pay attention to the awful commercials if you don’t want to, either. At a Super Bowl party, you’re forced to stay silent during breaks in the game or risk getting yelled at by someone still wearing a “Mayor Pete 4 Prez” sweatshirt because they just *have* to see what Doritos does with Weird Al. Super Bowl commercials are almost universally terrible and every year we have to pretend they’re the funniest and most imaginative pieces of creative content we’ve ever seen. We do the same thing with Saturday Night Live, but at least it actually has a decent musical guest every once in a while.

Since you probably skipped out on a party this year, you can completely ignore the halftime music, just like God intended. The halftime show is usually a stilted performance by someone who was famous six years ago lip synching a song that you first heard while shopping at TJ Maxx for your great aunt’s birthday. Without a party, you can use this time productively to restock your beer supply or order some food that’s actually warm when you go to put it in your mouth.

Super Bowl party food is almost always room temperature slop that you plop onto a stale Triscuit, because the party-throwers couldn't even be bothered to upgrade to Wheat Thins. You politely chew three pieces of balsa wood topped with Ro-Tel Dip until it’s all gone and you’re stuck sucking on a celery stick like the host’s pet rabbit.

There’s always one dish that everyone raves over, so much so that you feel bad taking a portion slightly larger than an ant’s penis. With that gone in the first hour, you revert to the usual suspects of party lore: pizza and wings. Cold pizza is great. One slice of cold pizza surrounded by 13 drunk people who all have to be at work in 12 hours is just a decent draw in one of Dante’s layers of hell.

We must face our grim reality head-on and without blinders. Super Bowl parties have always been devastatingly overrated, and this year gave you reason to put them to bed for good.

So when Super Bowl LVI comes around next year, pour yourself a stiff glass of the good stuff. Order some food you actually want and eat it all in one sitting. Enjoy the biggest football game of the year in peace and harmony, without a terrible party and the sad vibes it emits.

You can even watch a commercial or two if you so bravely choose. Just take heed of the lesson you learned in 2021: Super Bowl parties are pretty bad, and they always have been.

We can all raise a Triscuit to that.

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