Last Tuesday, I told you thatI was attempting to TiVo a football gamefor the first time ever I told you that I would watch my Northwestern Wildcats play the Iowa Hawkeyes six hours after the game ended. Almost 80 percent of you thought I couldn't do it without hearing any of the details before.
Well, I did it. I gave my BlackBerry to my fiance, Cortney. I didn't look at incoming phone calls or text messages. And I sat down at the television at 9:38 pm to watch the game.
This is basically what happened throughout the day as I avoided everything that could ruin the experience for me. I went to a store. ESPN was on. For fear that I'd see the score on the bottom line, I had them change it to golf. I didn't turn on the radio all day. As my blackberry vibrated, I wonder whether it was good or bad.
At around 2:50 pm. which is around the time the game probably ended, my Blackberry started buzzing and people were text messaging my phone. I suspected that we must have won because I got a message from a number correlating to the phone of Steve Weissman, a college buddy who I surmise would only text me if we won the game.
But I didn't know. Everyone I talked to in person during the day I had to preface the conversation with the fact that I didn't know the score. It tortured me.
When I sat down to watch, I thought I'd be less nervous for some reason. I guess that was grounded in the fact that the result was already final. But I was more nervous. I fidgeted in between plays. It got worse when Northwestern was down 17-3 early. My boys came back, but not enough for me to relax. It was 22-17 and I was fast forwarding through all of Iowa's plays on offense, just looking in the top right to see what down it was and quickly glancing to see where they were on the field.
The craziest part came at the end when Iowa was in the red zone with four chances with the clock ticking down. I screamed out, "I can't believe we lost." To which my fiance, who knew the result said, "You did?" I said, "We did, didn't we?" She didn't tell me. Four plays later, Northwestern was 5-0.
Let me just say what a horrible experience this was. I will never do it again. The bottom line is that it takes so much out of you to avoid life for so many hours that it's not worth it. I'd rather have the automatic reload going on my phone while the game is live.
- The Boss to play Super Bowl halftime
Questions? Comments? SportsBiz@cnbc.com
