Tonight's picture was taken on February 2, 2009. Hard to believe 11 years ago today. Mattie was in the child life playroom, and given that he was wearing clothes, this signals to me that he was admitted that day to the hospital for treatment. I know this because when living in the hospital Mattie only wanted to wear pajamas. On that day, my student, Pam, came to visit us. However, if you look at Mattie's face, you will see his intense level of unhappiness. Not directed to Pam per se, but just in general. Mattie preferred no talking and no visitors. Something that I did not express on the blog, but it was a reality that I was managing for months. Because Mattie was a child, I felt it was important to keep his community engaged and involved in his life. So I never turned away visitors. But it was super challenging managing visitors and Mattie's mood at the same time. Back then, I was under some delusion that Mattie would eventually go back to school, and therefore, these connections and bonds with the community would be needed. Unfortunately I was wrong.
Quote of the day: It's not the SIZE of the dog in the fight, but the size of the FIGHT in the dog. ~ Archie Griffin
Sunny got another walk today on Roosevelt Island, and with that we saw a bunch ('a herd') of 6 deer together. It was a lovely pre-spring sighting.
As I mentioned yesterday, we are invited to a Super Bowl party this evening. This is a first for me! Not being a sports fan, this should be no surprise that I typically neither watch the game or gather with people to share in this moment! Nonetheless, we are going, so I figured I would look up some Super Bowl facts. You can check them out below!
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91643/8-facts-about-super-bowl-i
In 1966, two football leagues were vying for gridiron dominance: the venerable NFL and the sport's newcomer, the AFL. On June 8, 1966, the two leagues announced their plans to merge, rather than compete over players and a split fan base. This meant a new championship game had to be conceived that would show which was the dominant league every year. Today we know it as the Super Bowl—one of the most polished, extravagant events of the entire year. But on January 15, 1967, when the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game took place, it was something bordering on a disaster, with television mishaps, a dispute over the name, and thousands of empty seats marring the very first Super Bowl Sunday. To see how the big game nearly fell apart, here are three facts about the first Super Bowl.
1. AT FIRST THE GAME WAS ONLY CASUALLY KNOWN AS THE SUPER BOWL.
In 1966, meetings were going on about the first-ever championship game between the NFL and the upstart AFL set to be played in January of that next year. In addition to talking about location and logistics, the big question on everyone’s mind was what to call it. Though Pete Rozelle, the NFL’s commissioner at the time, suggested names like The Big One and The Pro Bowl (which was the same name as the NFL’s own all-star game), it was eventually decided that the game would be called … the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
A name like that just doesn’t create much buzz, though, and the newly merged league needed something punchier. Then Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, recalled a toy his children played with, a Super Ball, which led to his idea: the Super Bowl.
The name picked up support from fans and the media, but Rozelle hated it, viewing the word “Super” as too informal. By the time the game began, the tickets read “AFL-NFL World Championship Game,” but people were still offhandedly referring to it as the Super Bowl. By the fourth year, the league caved and finally printed Super Bowl on the game's tickets. For Super Bowl V, the Roman numerals made their debut and stayed there every year except Super Bowl 50 in 2016. (The first three championship games have also been officially renamed Super Bowls retroactively.)
2. THE FIRST SUPER BOWL AIRED ON TWO NETWORKS.
Since the first Super Bowl involved two completely different organizations, there was a bit of an issue televising the game. NBC had the rights to air AFL games, while CBS was the longtime rights holder for the NFL product. Neither station was going to miss out on its respective league’s championship game, so the first Super Bowl was the only one to be simulcast on two different networks. It turns out the competition between the two networks for ratings superiority was just as intense as the helmet-rattling game played on the field. Tensions were so high leading up to game day that a fence had to be built in between the CBS and NBC production trucks to keep everyone separate.
3. SUPER BOWL I DIDN'T EVEN COME CLOSE TO SELLING OUT.
The cheapest price for a Super Bowl LIII ticket—which will take place on February 2, 2019—is currently hovering between $2500 and $3000, but frankly, you could probably charge people double that and the game would still be a guaranteed sellout. The first Super Bowl, however, didn’t quite have that same cachet behind it. With tickets averaging around $12 (compared to $4,000 to $5,000 in 2020), the AFL-NFL World Championship Game couldn’t manage to sell out the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1967. It’s still the only Super Bowl not to fill up its venue.
Despite blacking the game out on TV stations within 75 miles of the Coliseum to get fans to the stadium rather than watching at home, about a third of the stadium’s seats were empty. Some fans balked at the steep $12 ticket prices, while others were so incensed at the blackout that they stayed away out of protest.
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