There is a Super Bowl myth perpetuated by potato chip manufacturers and light-beer companies. And the myth is that everyone watches this supposed big game sitting at the edge of their seats, all wearing jerseys, all beautiful, extravagant snacks and beers in hand as they all rise from the couch, often in slow motion and sometimes in unison, to celebrate something that just happened on the screen upon which their eyes are locked.

There are likely less than a dozen actual Super Bowl parties like that in the world. And if you’ve been to one or if you ever find yourself at one, count yourself lucky. That is not how we, as Americans, watch the Super Bowl. Rather, it goes something like this…

I woke on Sunday morning realizing that this day would be the last full day of football until sometime next September. Sure, there was the Super Bowl, but it’s just not the same. Another season had slipped by.

Soon, Sundays would be occupied by the chores that had been swept aside over the course of the past four months. It’s usually a sad sensation when football season ends. Hell, some have said that the conclusion of the NFL season may have contributed to Hunter S. Thompson’s decision to blow out his brains.

Weirdly, I didn’t care that the season had come to an end. When the Giants kicked that field goal, I turned off the TV and wondered if I’d even bother watching the Super Bowl this year. I will, of course, but I did ponder the thought.

I’ve been writing words in this paper for more than five years. Some of you have enjoyed those words while others have detested them so much that they felt the need to call me, among other things, a communist. This week, however, is my last at the Source. Next week I’m going to go write for another paper in another city that is not Bend, Oregon.

Don’t worry – not that I actually thought you were particularly worried about the departure of someone who once called Tim Tebow fans a “gaggle of idiots” – I’ll still be writing this column for a few more weeks and maybe longer, but you’ll no longer be able to find me hunched behind my computer machine in that old brick building on Georgia Avenue.

The extra point, meaningless at this point in the game, clanked off the upright. There was a confused hush in the stadium, the television announcers fell silent and in the room in which I was watching the All-State BCS National Championship Presented by Professor Snoozington’s Boredom Tonic™, I wasn’t the only individual to laugh.

“That kind of sums up this entire affair,” is what uninterested parties seemed to be saying.

Trent Richardson had just rumbled 34 yards down the sideline for the only touchdown of the 120 minutes of play that LSU and Alabama had engaged in during the past two months. Finally, one of these two “defensive powerhouses” (which is code for “mind-numbingly tedious team to watch, unless you attended or live near said team”) had reached the end zone, but then the shanked extra point brought us back to a reality in which two teams from the same conference and same geographic region were playing (again) for a share in a championship that almost no one believes is actually legit.

On Christmas Eve, I – and my parents, siblings and our spouses – attended a football game in Seattle. The Seahawks were playing the 49ers in what was supposed to be a playoff-deciding matchup, so the family donned matching blue-and-green Santa hats (the too-cool-for-school 16-year-old hipster who lives inside of me cringed just a little bit), piled into the old man’s SUV and arrived at a parking lot near the stadium precisely three hours prior to kick off.

In the time that preceded kickoff, I ingested the following: three bowls of chili, four pieces of cornbread, half a bag of Ruffles, five 16 oz. cans of Olympia beer and a bevy of other salty items. I didn’t need any of this, which I realized about a third of the way up our Everest-like ascension to our surprisingly excellent seats. But, I had to eat and drink all that. We were at a big football game and I’ve long held dear to my heart the notion that all special sporting events are license to eat like a fat guy who really likes being fat and eating foods that will ensure he remains so.