I take a few long looks at the crowd whenever I watch an English Premier League soccer match. I am always impressed at what appears to be a person sitting in every seat. At every match. For every minute of every match. No matter the weather. In the winter, the fans stand out a bit […]

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I saw the Super Bowl approximately 19 hours later than did the bulk of NFL fans. On tape, of course. (Kickoff was 12:30 a.m. in Europe; I was in a Barcelona hotel, heavily jet lagged. I woke at 5 a.m., after sleeping right through the game.) Probably not much original left to say about the […]

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Over the previous seven days I posted a preview and six on-the-road reports from a 2,431-mile drive across the continent on Interstate 10, from Ontario to Jacksonville, site of the 2005 Super Bowl. Some thoughts, after retyping on this blog those newspaper submissions from 12 years ago. –We did another drive on Saturday, the day […]

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Day 7 of the series and Leg 6 of the Interstate 10 road trip to the 2005 Super Bowl, 163 miles from Tallahassee, Fla., to Jacksonville — part of the 2,431 miles across Interstate 10 from Ontario, Calif., to Jacksonville. From February 5, 2005 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — We knew we had arrived when we whizzed […]

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Day 6 of the series and Leg 5 of the Interstate 10 road trip to 2005 Super Bowl, 383 miles from New Orleans to Tallahassee, Fla., part of the 2,431 miles across Interstate 10 from Ontario, Calif., to Jacksonville, Fla. From February 4, 2005 TALLAHASSEE, Florida — We Left Coast natives tend to view Florida […]

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Day 5 of the series and Leg 4 of the road trip to the 2005 Super Bowl, 543 miles from San Antonio to New Orleans — part of the 2,431 miles across Interstate 10 from Ontario, Calif., to Jacksonville. From February 3, 2005 NEW ORLEANS — The party is already here. How come the Super […]

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Day 4 of the series and Leg 3 of the road trip to the 2005 Super Bowl, 558 miles from El Paso to San Antonio, part of the 2,431 miles across Interstate 10 from Ontario, Calif., to Jacksonville, Fla. From February 2, 2005 SAN ANTONIO — Texas is ridiculous. Almost any way you want to […]

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Day 3 of the series and Leg 2 of the road trip to the 2005 Super Bowl, 434 miles from Phoenix to El Paso, Texas, Jacksonville — part of the 2,431 miles across Interstate 10 from Ontario, Calif., to Jacksonville. (The following report came before Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, became globally notorious for drug gangs — […]

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Day 2 of the series and Leg 1 of the road trip to the 2005 Super Bowl, 350 miles from Ontario, Calif., to Phoenix, part of the 2,431 miles from Ontario to Jacksonville, Fla. From January 31, 2005 PHOENIX — The grizzled little man named “Mac” handles bets while sitting on a stool in an […]

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It has been suggested that the core of most successful prose is the road trip. Someone gets up, goes somewhere new, has adventures, sometimes returns home. And we find ourselves entertained by the process. Or so I believed when I pitched to editors the idea of a Super Bowl road trip, back in 2005. It […]

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