Students Cheer on Steelers’ Victory

Football, food, and funny commercials brought students together from throughout the Harvard community to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers triumph over the Arizona Cardinals, 27-23, during Superbowl XLIII last night.

Common spaces all over campus were made available to students, including freshman common rooms, House dining halls, Harvard Hillel, and the Student Organization Center at Hilles theater.

During the first quarter, tension permeated the Canaday Common Room, as twenty viewers—mostly males—leaned silently and intently towards the television. A football-shaped cake lay nearby, half-eaten.

A more relaxed and chatty mood marked the spacious Holworthy Common Room during the game’s second quarter.

“This game is definitely a lot more exciting than last year’s,” said Christopher W. Danello ’12, adding that he spent last year’s game with “family and a large bag of chips.”

“This is definitely better for my social life and for my waistline,” Danello said.

Roars of “Yes!” and “No!” burst from viewers as Steelers lineman Harrison scored a last-moment touchdown at the end of the second quarter.

Both teams boasted ardent fans. Nicholas G. Purcell ’11, who joined roughly forty others watching the game in Adams House Dining Hall, said that the Cardinals seemed to have more supporters in the room because of their underdog status.

“The Cardinals are a true Cinderella story, but the Steelers demonstrate the limitations to the Cinderella story, particularly applied to 200 pound men,” Danello said. “As unfortunate as it is, I predict that the Steelers will triumph.”

At every viewing party, chips, pizza, buffalo wings, and other standard football-watching edibles were plentiful.

A mysterious aroma of bacon filled the Holworthy common room. Curious students traced the source of the smell to the oven, where a “Bacon Explosion”—a recently popularized recipe that wraps Italian sausage and crumbled bacon in a layer of bacon and slathers it with barbecue sauce—was cooking.

“It’s highly unhealthy, but the Superbowl is a great excuse to bake one,” said Timothy J. Alford, a Divinity School graduate who was watching the game in Holworthy.

“We’re having a great time,” Alford said.

Adams House resident Ryan S. Nolan ’09 said that this year’s football fever was not as high as last year’s, when the New York Giants bested the New England Patriots.

“Last year, there was a bunch of drunk Giant fans rioting in the streets,” he said. “It was basically like if John McCain had won the election.”

Nolan had prepared for the excitement by “pre-gaming the game.”

“Extensively,” he added.

Tension mounted in the game’s final minute, as the Steelers scored a touchdown and the Cardinals seemed upon the verge of countering with a touchdown of their own. In the end, though, the Cardinals could not convert.

“The fact that it ended on a fumble was pretty disappointing, but overall it was a very exciting game,” Purcell said.

—Staff writer Helen X. Yang can be reached at hxyang@fas.harvard.edu.