Students bask in football frenzy

Last night was Lee's biggest night of the year. "Is there something special going on tonight?" Lee's Hoagie House owner Jan Zucker joked, speaking loudly above a chaotic background of ringing telephones and hollered orders. "Business is nuts." Something special was going on Super Bowl Sunday at the University, as hoagies and pizzas were delivered by the dozen, libraries were near empty, and across campus, shouts rose in sync from dorm rooms on a scale rivalling the Econ scream. Locust Walk was relatively deserted, as few scattered pedestrians passed Phi Sigma Kappa and Phi Delta Theta -- both houses having graciously brought their televisions outside to allow passers-by to catch a few minutes of the Dallas Cowboys-Buffalo Bills' combat. "I'm not so much pro-Bills as I am anti-Cowboys," Wharton and Engineering freshman Ben Prusky said at the barbecue outside Phi Delt. "I'm really an Eagles fan, and I'm kind of sick of the Cowboys and their little rise to glory." At the beginning of the game, at least, students seemed pretty much split down the middle in terms of their preference. "We want the Bills to win, definitely," College junior Mony Mehrotra said while waiting for the elevator to go to a Super Bowl party in High Rise North. "[Former Chicago Bears' Coach] Mike Ditka said it best," College freshman Wilton Levine said on behalf of his beloved Cowboys at a Super Bowl party in the Quadrangle. "They're simply a better team. No question." There were those, however, who walked the proverbial fence. "Who cares about these two teams? Dallas, Buffalo -- who cares?" Wharton junior Ethan Falkove said as he picked up his pizzas. "The only reason I'm watching is because it's the Super Bowl." Whatever the reason, in the University's residence halls, students convened around any available television set, and Bills and Cowboys fans and haters alike watched together in screaming, shouting, insult-laden harmony. "It's just more fun to watch it with friends, and to yell at each other," College freshman Andrew Segall said. "It's a day to hang out with the guys, drink beer, eat pizza, make bets, and yell at things you really have no control over," Wharton sophomore Scott Paterno said. "It's a big American tradition, and it's the last good full day of football to watch." Paterno, who called the Super Bowl "the biggest male bonding day of the year," qualified his call by saying that "more girls are watching the game than before." But Super Bowl Sunday, many students noted, is in no way necessarily correlated to testosterone. "A lot of men think that women don't know about football," Mehrotra said. "They're wrong." And College freshman Diana Flores, a San Antonio native watching the game with a Texas hat proudly on her head, cheered the Cowboys loyally. "I've been watching the Super Bowl for I don't know how many years," Flores said. "And the Cowboys are going to win." There were those students, though, who continued in their scholarly pursuits regardless of the game. And some took advantage of the chance to have their pick of seats at the Rosengarten Reserve Room. "I'm surprised that there are people here," Social Work graduate student Molly Brualt said as she sat alone at her own private table in the library. "I actually thought I'd be here all alone."