Saturday, February 10th: Irish Super Bowl and Belfast Basketball Derby

    

    What's better, knowing the Super Bowl is rigged and not watching the 4 hr 14 min game to save yourself the disappointment, or still knowing it's rigged and watching it with friends and Irish 49ers fans in a pub. Correct! I'm glad I stayed up until 4:00 am to be not only disappointed that the infamous Kansas City Chiefs won, but it was all worth it to see a group of 7 American Football fan Irishmen cheering for just about anything the San Francisco 49ers did from declining penalties to making a field goal. It was refreshing! The pints of Guinness and two plates of pulled pork nachos also sweetened the deal. My teammates Nate and Igor were there to share the experience with me as well. 

    Given the time change from Las Vegas, USA to Belfast, NI, the Super Bowl kickoff was scheduled for 11:30 pm. We figured we would enjoy the game more if we watched it outside of our flat and on a larger screen than my computer, so we found a pub called Pug Ugly's and went an hour early to get seats and a good view of the screen. When we first sat down, a 49ers fan named David, donned in a large Brock Purdy  (QB) jersey and a hat with various 49ers pins and insignia, approached our table giving us an opportunity to participate in a pub-wide betting competition with a £5 entry fee. He gave us a sheet full of bets to choose from like "Who will have more passing yards: Mahomes or Purdy" and "What will the coin toss be: heads or tails?" When it was called HEADS on the stream, that was probably the most excited I got all night along with a few others that were standing up and whooping. I guessed heads correctly, everything else, not quite sure. The game was a defensive battle the whole time we were there, which made the end of the game all the more anxiety inducing. 

    

    After watching Usher's halftime show, it had been about 2.5 hours since we had been at Pug Ugly's. Since the excitement had died down, we decided to catch an Uber home at about 2:00 am. After getting back to my room and getting ready for bed, I checked the score of the game and it was close again: 13-10 in the 3Q. I couldn't miss out on the end of the game so I stayed up. Little did I know, I'd be awake for another hour and a half. I flipped through various streams of the game on TikTok and it eventually went into overtime. By now, it was 3:00 am, I'm wide awake and super anxious to see if the 49ers could secure the win. Not to my surprise, the Chiefs somehow get their head out of a dark place after staying relatively silent the whole game and manage to strut down the field to score the game winning overtime touchdown. Yea, it was totally rigged. Take a look at ESPN's win probability graphic... 

   

    And you're probably saying, "Eric, surely it wasn't, we've seen crazy comebacks in the Super Bowl before! Remember? Patriots VS. Falcons, 2017? Patriots came back from being down 28-3 with 17 minutes left!"...No. That was Tom Brady and greatness, not Taylor Swift and the government. I said what I said. Go Bears. 

    The night before the Super Bowl, on Saturday night, I had a derby game against Belfast Star in their new stadium at Newforge Sports Complex. If it wasn't understood already, a "derby" in the UK is a local rival sports game. There was a foggy rumor when we were all warming up that we would have to change our jersey color, since Star's uniform was horizontally split in half, blue and white. We wore our white uniforms and somehow, a lot of us were convinced we needed to switch into our blue uniforms, which our coach wisely asked us to bring. Even though the two teams have a friendly rivalry, it sounded like we were paranoid they would make us switch into our other uniforms to sabotage our mental strength. Between me thinking the Super Bowl is rigged and my uniform change paranoia, which do you think is more likely? Right, the Super Bowl. We played them earlier in the season in our house in Jordanstown, but lost that one. Reigning atop the league at the #1 spot, we had our hands full going into the game, but we were mentally prepared. Despite our preparedness, we lost again. I was relatively quite the whole game offensively but we felt rushed and pushed out of the spots we wanted to be offensively. They are a physically big team, so it was a battle for everyone, including the guards. Despite the result, it was a great venue and sold out crowd and was enjoyable to play in front of an engaged loud crowd. 

    

    My recipe for this blog is a homemade version of an American comfort food brand, Hamburger Helper. I essentially made Cheeseburger Macaroni (I used Fusilli instead) with extra beef. I think the combination of watching the Super Bowl without a whole snack spread and the weather being relatively wet and cold, I had a hankering for this comforting dish. Here are the ingredients and recipe I used from pinterest: 

Ingredients

Meat

• 1 lb Ground beef or ground turkey 

"The Helping Hand" or "Lefty" is
the Hamburger Helper frontman ◡̈ 

Produce

• 3/4 Garlic powder

• 1/2 cup Onions

• 3/4 tsp Oregano

• 3/4 tsp Parsley

Pasta & Grains

• 2 cups Elbow macaroni

Baking & Spices

• 1/4 tsp Black pepper

• 1/2 tsp Chili powder

• 1 tsp Paprika

• 1 tsp Salt or seasoning salt

• 1/2 tsp Sugar

Dairy

• 1 tbsp Butter

• 2 cups grated Cheddar cheese

• 2 cups Milk

Liquids

• 1 cup Water

 

The recipe is very simple even a Swiftie can do it! Ayo!

Recipe

1. Brown ground meat in a skillet over medium heat until almost done.
2. Add minced onions and cook until tender.
3. Drain fat from pan.
4. Add all remaining ingredients except cheese.
5. Stir to combine. 
6. Bring to a boil. 
7. Reduce heat, cover and cook until pasta for 10 minutes. 
8. Remove from heat and stir in cheese until thick and creamy to your liking. 
9. Serve and enjoy! 

Ulster has a big game this coming weekend against St. Vincent. I'll either write another blog post or post on my instagram stories about it. Until next time!

Cheers,

Eric