Is it going to shock you to hear that I didn't watch the Super Bowl this year? Maybe? Just a little? No, probably not. While the civilized world was watching the most sacred game of the football season, I was doing other things, like writing this column. You might be thinking, "Wow! That's dedication!" but it's not. I skipped the game, because that's how I approach all professional sports. I don't have the desire to watch the games. There are too many tattoos, hairstyles, attitudes, and mega-dollars on the field for me to care. So, I do other things.

I spent the first three quarters of the game in a nap. Let's call it the Nap Bowl. Today's Nap Bowl was a battle between my subconscious and my sanity.

My back had been hurting fiercely, so my wife plastered one of those hot-and-cold menthol sticky things on the sore spot. It's supposed to help you feel better, but it just fueled a really big nightmare. My subconscious kicked off by taking me back to Georgia Tech, for a graduate-level math class. I was sitting in class, wondering why in the world I was back in college. Then it hit me. This wasn't just a single class; I was enrolled in a master's degree program in mathematics! As I panicked, my subconscious scored a touchdown with the classic play, "And you haven't been to a single class all semester!" That was just too much to bear.

My sanity - shaken up beyond recovery - took the ball and tried to regain the lost ground, but it was too late.
I awoke in a sweat and staggered into my office to reassure myself I was not a student again, and here I am, mentally bruised and crushed, writing while the world watches the final physical thuds and crunches of the Big Game.

By the way, as I started this column, I had to use the internet to find out who was playing in the Super Bowl. When I saw that it was the Giants and the Patriots, my first thought was, "Giants? Aren't they a baseball team in San Francisco?"

Clearly, I'm not one of the illuminati of professional sports. These non-baseball-playing Giants are located somewhere in New Jersey or New York. And the Patriots are from somewhere in England, I think. New something? Newcastle, maybe? No, probably not.

David McCoy, a notorious storyteller and proud Yellow Jacket, lives in Covington and can be reached at davmccoy@bellsouth.net