It made for an interesting Monday.

I watched the Super Bowl this year. This isn't especially spectacular. I have always watched it, and my team was playing against my roommate's team. It is worth writing about here, however, once you start to think about time zones. Kick-off was at 6:30 EST, and I live 6 hours ahead of EST. The game started at 12:30 am, went to about 4:15 am, and I watched the whole thing!

During playoffs, one of the guys at church mentioned that he was planning to host a Super Bowl party. My first thought was, "oh, fun!" My second thought was, "Wait a second... what time is that?" He explained that after church that day, you go home and go right to bed. Around dinner time, we were to come over and hang out, then watch the game, take a nap and head to work.
And so we did. We ordered pizza, played video games, made posters to support our respective teams, and watched the Packers beat the Steelers. :( Well, some of us saw it; others watched with their eyes closed!
The Super Bowl on Italian television has a few, ah, alterations. First of all, it's on ESPN America. It's the same station as baseball games, college basketball, and pretty much anything else sports-related that the rest of the world doesn't care about. Because it's not CBS, or whoever showed it this year, the commercials aren't shown. It's very sad. Instead, you get fun trivia facts about football and Super Bowls past.

Also, they explain a lot more of what's going on: "In American football, instead of an extra point, teams may try to carry the football into the end zone again, resulting in two extra points instead of just one." Because I have watched the sport all my life, and occasionally cared enough to try to figure it out, these were mostly amusing, rather than informative. I suppose they could be helpful for you average Italian insomniac who stumbled across this strange sport in the middle of the night, however!