At Big Game in San Diego, unlikeliest of minchas

Replay: This feature was a reader favorite when it first appeared last January.

The Super Bowl. The Ultimate sporting event in North America. A virtual national holiday, no matter which team you happen to root for. A day for parties, big-screen TVs, serious calorie consumption, and those spectacular, high-priced commercials.

With Super Bowl XLVIII (that’s 48, for those of us who are Roman numerally challenged) being played here in the New York area for the first time on Feb. 2, it seems only fitting to share one of the ultimate Jewish experiences of my life. A mincha service for the ages at Super Bowl XXXII.

The date: Jan. 25, 1998. The place: Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California. The epic match-up: Between the Green Bay Packers and the Denver Broncos. In attendance: 68,000 spectators, with another 90 million watching at home on television. Among those seated behind the goalpost at the north end of the stadium were myself, and a young colleague of mine by the name of “Yankel.” Just the story of how we ended up attending this spectacle is rather remarkable.

Back in 1998, I was working as the director of public relations and marketing for an international postal agency. Yankel, only a teenager at the time, had recently been hired to help out in the stockroom. My love for sports, and pro football in particular, was well known around my workplace. Every Monday morning during football season, my corner office would fill with a half-dozen or so NFL enthusiasts to recap the weekend’s games. We had a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, a Miami Dolphins diehard, two Dallas Cowboys rooters, and an assortment of backers for our pair of local teams. Yankel, as I recall, was a New York Jets fan. It would be hard to call him “long-suffering” back then, as he was only 18-years old. However, his passion for the sport, and his knowledge of the game made him a valuable contributor to our Monday morning wrap-ups.