Super Bowl Blues

I tend to take my sports pretty seriously, so please excuse the lapse in the blog posts.  I've been in a bit of an emotional funk since Sunday.

It was going to be a perfect day:  an afternoon Penguins game (I loves me a hockey matinee!) leading up to the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.

I knew the game against the Caps would be a tough one.  Every one is.  But it shocked me when all our positive momentum in the first period left us down 1-0.  That we were held scoreless felt like a bad omen.  But I'm not a doom and gloom fan; hope springs eternal, right?

Down to the last couple minutes of the Super Bowl, I thought the Steelers might be able to redeem their first half performance and overcome the deficit.  When it was over, all the hype and anticipation of the day fell flat.

Some of my friends expressed the sentiment, "Even if they didn't win, they made it to the Super Bowl, and that's an accomplishment."  But ask any Buffalo Bills fan if losing at the Super Bowl (or four of) makes them feel any prouder of their team's resume.

How I feel now is nothing compared to when the Penguins lost to the Canadiens in last season's playoffs.  It doesn't compare to how I felt when the Steelers lost to the Patriots in the playoffs in 1996.  But it still manages to leave an empty spot, a little sick feeling, that makes me tend to agree with my friend Mentha, who said, "I don't want to talk about it."  I'm assuming, of course, she was referring to the Super Bowl.

What I could really use right now:  a Penguins win, a hocky matinee, someone to use "yinz" in a sentence, a move to Pennsylvania, a hat trick, Terrible Towels waving, a Yuengling, another Stanley Cup, anyone to declare that Green Bay didn't win that so much as show up and let us lose.  The list goes on and on.

What I'll take:  seeing my teams play, even if they lose; taking phone calls from Pennsylvanians as part of my job as a chance to hear that accent again; my son's agreement to play hockey, though only when given the ultimatum that it's hockey or swimming lessons;  a Yuengling Light drunk from a frozen Penguins mug; and any indication that I'm on way out of these Super Bowl blues.