celebration moved into the winter of Indiana, complete with a repeal of the “open container” laws.
The bars downtown were jammed and full of revelry. Everyone from the Village People to LMFAO to Darius Rucker to O.A.R. played free shows in the city streets. The zip line was a raging success. The enormous, peaceful mass of humanity downtown on Saturday night and the party raged until 5 a.m. on the day of the game.
I kissed the bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Even though it looks like I’m vomiting at the foot of the Mara franchise.)
I drank beer out of ice glasses on the track:
This Super Bowl, was, well…SUPER!
And whatever “economic projections” the government lied about to get the game and get Lucas Oil Stadium built all somehow became factual last week.
I must admit that other than seeing the Rolling Stones on the beach in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago, I’ve never seen more people in one place celebrating anything in my life. It felt like there were 250,000 people downtown on Saturday night.
On Sunday, I’ll admit that I got a little blue – and I don’t mean Colts “blue” — in regard to the game. Finally, Giants and Patriots fans were pouring into the city and it depressed me about Lee Evans and Billy Cundiff and “wide left” all over again. At 3 p.m., I didn’t even want to go to the stadium and endure it. All I could think about was what was going on in Baltimore on Super Bowl Sunday and what could’ve been going on had fate been twisted. Every Patriots fan I saw had a story about winding up in Indianapolis. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about the disappointment of our Ravens’ fans and how many of us would’ve been lining the downtown streets and the chicanery WNST.net would’ve succeeded in rallying.
This is what it looked like last time:
I’ve been inside Lucas Oil Stadium many times – I’ll practically live there again from Feb. 25-28 for the NFL Combine – but I gotta say that the place is impressive and like most of Indianapolis, clean like the Disney World pavement. And any Ravens fan would walk in there and say this: “Why didn’t we build a place like this in Baltimore?”
Well, I’d ask David Modell and the Maryland and Baltimore governments the same thing if I hadn’t already called them fools in 1996 when they didn’t build a dome to begin with in Baltimore.
The Colts have these hanging banners throughout the upper deck lobby with the faces of their fans and their date of birth. They say “Colts Pride” and “Blue since 19XX”…and of course, if you were born before 1984 and are a fan it simply says “Blue since 1984.”
(This is the part where I’d write that I would’ve been “Blue since 1968” if Bob Irsay hadn’t stolen the goddamned team. But, again, I’m self-soothing here…)
And as weird of a week as it was for me seeing Indianapolis come to life and the Colts celebrate a crowning achievement in the “friendly heart of The Midwest” hosting the Super Bowl it had to be even more strange for these Colts fans
