What Football Game? Not Everybody Spent Day Watching Super Bowl
Some people think a Super Bowl isn’t worth watching unless the Dallas Cowboys are playing.
Susan Ramsey is one of those people.
While more than 100 million people around the planet tuned in to the climax of America’s football season on Sunday, Ramsey sat on a green bench in Riverfront Park and watched her 5-year-old son, Timothy, terrorize ducks.
The boy was wearing a gray and blue Cowboys sweat shirt.
“I’m not going to watch these teams,” Ramsey said, the disdain clear in her voice. “The Cowboys - they’re the greatest, don’t you know?”
Although it was Super Bowl Sunday, not everyone in Spokane was a sofa spud marinating in the glow of another Super Bowl and another crop of the most expensive television commercials ever.
“I’ve got kids to think about,” said Michelle Ambrose, who was sharing the bench with Ramsey. In a stroller next to her was 3-year-old Cece, and running around the riverfront was 5-year-old Missy.
“I don’t care for football, but my girls are partial to the (San Francisco) 49ers,” Ambrose said.
Although this afternoon, Cece seemed more partial to a big piece of candy in her hand and Missy was trying her hardest to get as wet as the ducks bobbing in the Spokane River.
Across the park at the Ice Palace, Craig Collis and his 9-year-old daughter, Bryn, were pulling off their hockey skates about 25 minutes after the big game had started. They didn’t seem in a hurry to get to a TV set.
“I’m a single parent and I have to care for my daughter,” Collis said. “I can’t just sit around and let her watch me veg in front of the game.”
Besides, he knew who was going to win - Green Bay. It would be a “blowout,” Collis predicted, not so accurately. Denver won in a close game.
Next door to one of Spokane’s Sunday shrines to football - the Ram Restaurant & Big Horn Brewery - another group on the third floor of the Spokane Art School was ignoring the biggest sporting event of the universe.
Painter-instructor Kay O’Rourke was leading eight students through a creativity workshop.
“This is more fun than watching the TV, or the ‘idiot box,’ as my mom calls it,” said Charnay Robinson, 11.
But Robinson and her friend, 11-year-old Chelsie Reeves, knew who was playing, what their colors were and whom they wanted to win: the Packers.
“Football is fun to watch when you don’t have anything else to do,” Robinson said.
But this heresy wasn’t as pure as it sounded. This girl planned to watch the game later - on videotape.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (2 color)