Zach Anderson

It’s that time of year again; the Super Bowl is around the corner. It brings people together for one common cause: to enjoy a game between two teams they may not necessarily care about, to have a party, watch some commercials, throw back some Mountain Dews and to enjoy each other’s company in the midst of a delicious spread of food.

The Super Bowl is a national event that has almost an entire day dedicated to it, and one of the most celebrated championship games in all of sports. No other sporting event even comes close to drawing in the amount of people that the Super Bowl does.

It doesn’t matter what teams are playing or where the Super Bowl is being played, people keep paying to watch the games, either actually buying a ticket to the game, which on stubhub.com are ranging from $1,448 to $254,554, or by buying a new big screen to watch the game from home.

If someone told me earlier this year that the Cardinals and Steelers would be in the Super Bowl, I would have scoffed in their face. I personally do not know anyone outside of Arizona, maybe even in Arizona, who thought the Cardinals would be headed to Tampa this year.

The best part about the Super Bowl is that for one day out of the year people can root for another team. Last year, someone I know made the Giants their second favorite team just because he hated the Patriots. He even did a victory dance when the Giants completed the upset.

I usually watch the Super Bowl for the game, but last year’s snoozefest until the fourth quarter really makes a person appreciate the friends around him and the food on his plate.

Without David Tyree’s helmet clasping catch and Eli Manning getting out of a crowd of defenders when it looked impossible, the rest of last year’s Super Bowl may have been a good time to catch up on sleep.

The commercials, on the other hand, were pretty good. Budweiser is always good for about two or three quality commercials, especially the one with Hank the Clydesdale not making the horse team then having the Dalmatian train him, along with FedEx and the giant carrier pigeons.

Those commercials, as well as a few others, are enough to keep a person from taking a bathroom break throughout the whole four-hour spectacle that is the Super Bowl.

No Super Bowl party is complete without a spread of food. Whether it’s pizza, chips and dip, sub sandwiches or little cocktail weenies, the food matters.

People gather to watch the Super Bowl for the love of the game, a spirited rivalry with your roommate across the room whose new favorite team is the Steelers, the commercials that make people laugh, or the abundance of food. You don’t have to like football; you just need a television, a room of friends, good food and four hours of free time.