View from the Super Bowl--2

It's Tuesday afternoon. I arrived home about 1 am this morning. The emotions are still raw after being so close to winning the game.

I've never attended a Super Bowl before. May never get the opportunity again. This was such an historic one--the Cards first, that it was hard to pass up.

We were able to arrive a couple hours earlier than planned due to getting an earlier flight. I'm so glad we could do that. It gave us plenty of time to take it all in.

We took a cab from the airport to the stadium, or as near to it as we could get. We took a long walk over to pick up our tickets and then headed to the stadium. Though it was about 3-4 hours before kickoff we decided we had nothing better to do so we headed in. The crowds at that point were small so we got in quickly. We entered just as the AZ Cards cheerleaders were entering.

As we began to head into the stadium we heard cheering from some Cards fans. The team bus had just pulled up. So we were able to cheer for the team as they headed to the locker room. Though we couldn't get real close, it was pretty cool to be there at that moment. My son Mike was able to catch Kurt Warner's attention for a brief second! A highlight he'll remember for the rest of his life.

We ate some really expensive stadium food and then walked the stadium and took some pictures. Then we headed to our seats and watched the day unfold over the next few hours from early warm ups by the team to the stadium filling to the teams coming back out to warm up again.

It didn't take long to figure out it was a Steelers home game! Probably 25 Steeler Fans for every 1 Cards fan.

We sat up in the Cards endzone side, way up in the nosebleed section. But at least we were in the building.

What struck us was how much of an event the Super Bowl is on TV. But all the glitz aside, it really felt like a football game being there live. Perhaps that's because we weren't watching all the pre-game stuff. We didn't see any of the commercials. It was all about the game.

The other thing that struck me was how we all think the Super Bowl is a "rich man's" event--that only the elite attend. But most of the people in our area, in fact most of the fans I saw, were every day people who decided to make a great financial sacrifice to be a part of that game and to support their team. I'm sure the rich and famous were there, but not up where we were. This was really a game filled with every day fans.

Faith Hill was very good. Jennifer Hudson was amazing. The flyover was so close to us that I could reach up my hand and almost touch the Jets!

Finally the game began. To be honest, I was so thrilled to be there and to see the Cards there that I wasn't all that nervous about winning or losing...until it looked like we could win it.

More on that in the next post.