When dealing with sports and my close knit circle of friends there are two major days each year that we all look forward to, the first being Super Bowl Sunday and the other is the NBA finals. I’ve always considered myself lucky as I’ve had the same close friends since elementary school and we have all chosen to stay in the old neighborhood. This makes getting together for our two favorite sporting events extremely easy and we’ve been doing this for about fifteen years this year.



As with any typical male gathering there is plenty of male bonding to be had. Such events are full of yearly rituals which include a healthy portion of various beverages, pretzels, hot wings, pizza, taquitos and chips and salsa. There is of course plenty of yelling and cheering to boot which generally drives the wives out of the living room if not the house.

Though our choice of food and drink does vary at each meeting one thing never changes and that’s our donning of our favorite NFL Jerseys and even NBA Jerseys. While we are not all fans of the same team we expect each other to show up in our favorite jerseys and then take advantage of the situation to tear each other down for supporting our favorite teams. As I previously stated, this is the full bodied male bonding experience.

This year is particularly exciting for me as my son is now old enough to join us in our Super Bowl celebration. This specific group of friends all had children before I started my family and their sons have been in attendance at our get together’s for the past three years so I am looking forward to this years events more than I normally do. My son has been asking to come along for the last two years but he was just to young to appreciate the kind of fun we have at these things. Now that he’s sixteen I feel he’s old enough and can handle a rowdy crowd.

As the Super Bowl is rapidly approaching we are in a rush to make sure he’s got a team jersey. My son routes for several teams so he’s asking for multiple NFL Jerseys and no matter how hard I might try to convince him he only needs one it’s likely this will be a battle I lose and he’ll end up with at least two. He’s going to have to do some quick shopping online though since the stores of late have turned up negative results when searching for NBA Jerseys and even NFL Jerseys. The boy has his heart set on a Redskins Jersey and wants to get his Pacers Jersey early as well but it seems as though this is a bad time of year to look for team apparel, at least in malls.

This year should be loads of fun for all of us. Now that we all have at least one of our kids with us and everyone is confirmed as showing this year I am predicting a rowdy and raucous time. The only thing missing from our annual gatherings is the teams we actually route for. It has been many years since any one of us has seen our football and basketball teams take it all the way. Then again the more I reflect on these things the more I realize that’s it’s not about our jersey’s, or even the game to some extent. It’s just nice to meet up with old friends and introduce our sons to tradition.