Well, we’re less than a week away from the biggest football game of the season!  And whether your team is in the Super Bowl or not, its still a great time to celebrate and spend time with friends and family…and the delicious food that is synonymous with Super Bowl parties!

When thinking about Super Bowls and celebrations, I’m always transported back in time to my second year in college (little did I know that I was only a fourth of the way through my college career at that point).  I had just moved off campus and into a house, which by today’s standards, could have easily qualified to be condemned.  I’ll spare you the details of how we left it when we moved out.

I moved in with four other friends.  One was a buddy of mine I came to college with and the other three were friends I had made the previous year.    Three out of my four roommates were die-hard Washington Redskin fans.  And as fate would have it, the Skins were in the Super Bowl that year facing the Buffalo Bills.  And they went on to beat the Buffalo Bills and become Super Bowl Champions!

Because it is such a glorious feeling to watch your favorite team win the most important game of the year on the grandest stage of them all (I would finally experience this in 2007), my three roommates did what came naturally.  They hauled their microphone and speaker systems out on to the roof of our two-story house.  And I’m not talking about some rinky dink speaker system either.  This particular system would have put the one that Marty McFly struck a chord to at the beginning of Back to the Future to shame!

I’ll never forget sitting in my bedroom on the first floor and hearing a booming voice from above shouting, “Testing…testing…1,2,3.”  I proceeded outside to our overgrown front lawn and saw my three roommates standing on the roof, making some final adjustments to what was apparently now their public address system.  Within minutes, the three of them were belting out a riveting rendition of ‘Hail to the Redskins!’  Within a few more minutes, a large crowd of students had gathered outside of our house to see what all the commotion was about.  Within a few more minutes of that…you guessed it…Johnny Law arrived.  Two of Radford’s finest pulled up to our house, lights flashing, but no siren sounding.  I wonder to this day if it was because they were enjoying the free concert and didn’t want to interrupt it until it was done.

They did their job and cited my friends with a noise violation.  They would each then be ordered to complete an insane amount of community service hours.  I remember talking to one of them about the incident a few weeks later as he was serving his ‘hard time’ and keeping track of how many hours he had left to record.  He said he had no regrets about what happened.  It was a time for celebration and he’d do it all over again if he had the chance.

So take time this Super Bowl Sunday to celebrate the big game.  Not to the extent that my three buddies did, but celebrate nonetheless.  Whether it’s because you’re a Ravens or 49er’s fan.  Or whether it’s because you’re just happy the Patriots aren’t in another Super Bowl.  Or whether it’s simply because you get to spend quality time with family and friends (just remember not to talk during the commercials).  Take a few hours this Sunday and celebrate.  Enjoy the game, the company and, of course, the food.  The busyness and demands of our hectic lives will be there when Monday morning rolls around.  But, as for Sunday evening, remember you have other plans.