The Day After: Now what do fans do?

Martin Kuz

Monday, Jan. 26, 1998 | 10:07 a.m.

Watching the Super Bowl is like getting married when you're drunk. Seems fun at the time, but when the sun comes up the next morning, an ugly question smacks you right between the dilated pupils:

Now what?

For football fans, today is the Day After. Another NFL season has flamed out like a Roman candle, casting Sundays into a chasm of darkness. A nation went to sleep last night afraid and trembling, wondering if tomorrow -- let alone training camp -- would ever come.

It did, of course, but that still won't help us figure out what to do with ourselves next weekend. Baseball reigns as America's putative pastime, but no other sport rules a day of the week like football does Sunday. Family picnics are deserted, wives lose their husbands between the couch cushions, even pastors hurry to wrap up their sermons before kick-off. And the biggest Sunday of them all is the Super Bowl, when fans and non-fans alike gather with a profound desire to share in the annual spectacle. Or at least score some cheap beer.

"It's a national holiday," said Doug Eckhardt as he watched the Denver Broncos top the Green Bay Packers 31-24 in Super Bowl XXXII. "It's almost tribal. It unites former enemies. Instead of people rooting for their own team like they do during the season, now everyone is just a football fan. It's a catharsis. It's a lily bed of tranquility."

While swilling at the Blue Ox on West Sahara Avenue, Eckhardt and his cousin, Curt Wateland, described football as their lifelong pursuit. Watching football, that is. Childhood pals from the tiny Minnesota town of Breckenridge, the two 30-something men gather at the Ox every Sunday during the season to see if their home-state Vikings can add to a legacy of breathtaking mediocrity.

"A good Vikings fan doesn't expect too much," Eckhardt explained. "It's all about modest expectations -- that's the Viking way. I guess that's why we peaked in the 1300s."

But no matter a fan's allegiances, with the Super Bowl history, the NFL lumbers into hibernation. (Forget next week's Pro Bowl in Honolulu, a game about as satisfying as O'Douls.) And that means Eckhardt and Wateland must face life -- the next eight months of it, anyway -- without the one thing that brings order to their Sundays.

It's a frightening time. So to gauge the withdrawal that football addicts endure in the off-season, the two friends agreed to provide a glimpse into the psyche of the typical fan. "Typical" in this case was defined as: "If I had to choose between donating a kidney and watching football, I guess I'd watch football -- so long as I got my Old Mil." While both men said they preferred football to reckless organ donation, however, Eckhardt allowed that he "wouldn't mind giving up a kidney if it was after the game."

Their typicalness established, Eckhardt and Wateland were subjected to the following questions designed to understand the depth of fans' post-Super Bowl anguish. While his cousin busied himself with video poker, Eckhardt acted as spokesman, gamely fielding each query between sips of Heineken.

Q: Which is worse: The utter fear and emptiness you feel standing at ground zero in Hiroshima as the bomb hits, or the utter fear and emptiness you feel once the final gun of the Super Bowl sounds?

Eckhardt: "The end of the season, definitely. At least with Hiroshima, you only have to go through it once. With football, you have to watch it end every season."

Q: Which is worse: Discovering that your presidential spouse has allegedly been playing naked Twister with the intern, or having to wait until September for the new season to begin?

Eckhardt: "That's a tough one. But I do know that the only way to keep my sanity in the off-season is to practice total abstinence."

Q: Which is worse: Blaming the media and weakly playing the race card when a state commission finds you guilty of violating two Nevada ethics laws, or knowing that next week at this time you'll have to watch one of those girly sports like figure skating?

Wateland: "Depends on what the girls look like."

Eckhardt: "Not having football. (In the off-season) I'll read the TV guide much more often just hoping I'll find a game. Besides, who can get excited about watching the short program? Can you imagine if they choreographed an entire football game? What's the point?"

Q: Which is worse: Knowing that you'll walk out of here today and the Spice Girls will not have been executed for crimes against humanity, or knowing that you'll never see NBC broadcaster Dick Enberg -- who, when you think about it, looks a little like the Pillsbury Doughboy around the face -- announce another football game?

Eckhardt: "Not seeing Dick Enberg. I can only hope they cryogenically freeze him so my offspring have a chance to see him."

Q: Which is worse: Waking up on a Monday to learn that your spouse has left you, you've been fired from your job and even your three-legged dog won't come when you call him, or realizing that next Sunday, for the first time in four months, you'll actually have to think for yourself?

Eckhardt: "I don't know on that one. I do know that the commercials are way better during the football season, though."

As perhaps could be expected, neither Eckhardt or Wateland has any firm plans for next Sunday, although Wateland ventured that he would "probably" get out of the house. Eckhardt, on the other hand, may be staying in. A swimming pool subcontractor by day, he has another full-time task to tend to in the off-season, one familiar to many a football fan.

"I gotta make up to my wife."