The coin flip sealed it for me but I'll get back to that shortly.

My father asked last week if I wanted to drive to Jacksonville with him for the big weekend. To visit some old friends and see the pageantry up close. I passed for two reasons. One, we didn't have tickets to the game (or any reasonable prospects of getting them) and two, I wanted to watch it the way the rest of the world did. I couldn't wait to sit my living room with my beer and my wings and my dog and fire up my tv and look over the shoulders of Terry and Howie and Jimmy at the city that made the big time. People called it bush league when I lived there. Snobby people who didn't know what they were talking about but they said it all the same. I hope they were watching television Sunday because the River City By the Sea ain't bush league no more. Not by a long shot.

On August 15, 1979, I was 14 years old. I'll never forget cajoling Charles Bennett's mom into driving us to the taco place on Lane Avenue so we could catch a bus to the Gator Bowl to watch a surly old man touch down at the fifty yard line in a helicopter while fifty thousand people went crazy. Colt Fever wasn't much more than that surly guy, some cheerleaders and free cokes and hotdogs. But anyone who was there will tell you. Jacksonville, Florida, somewhere south of Brunswick, Georgia and not to be confused with the "Florida" on the billboards up north had a yearning. We wanted a team. An NFL team. We actually had the audacity to think we could be big time.

Thank Jake. Jake Godbold was the last bubba mayor the city ever had. Jake Godbold and a few others thought Jacksonville could break out of its bush league image. And they figured there was no better way than getting the NFL to come to town. Although it only came for a look-see while Jake was still pulling strings, that look-see was the beginning of the realization I watched in my living room yesterday. Sports Illustrated noticed. Made fun of us, but noticed nonetheless. And you have to start somewhere. If memory serves, Houston flirted next. And we got some more fun made of us.

In the meantime, we made the best of what we had. I went to every so-called bush league game I could get a ride to. From the Sharks to the Express to the Bulls. From the Suns to the Tea Men. When ten thousand people show up to an indoor soccer game to support a team named the "Tea Men" in Jacksonville, Florida, you’ve gotta figure the locals believe. While we got laughed at, we believed. And many years later, a shoe salesman from up north saw the belief. And building on the spirit of Jake Godbold (along with several million dollars), he, WE, somehow, some way talked ourselves into the National Football League. The Big Time.

I spent Sunday looking over shoulders. I looked past Terry and Howie and Jimmy. Even past Deion and Jerry Rice and Tom Arnold and the Black Eyed Peas. And what I saw looked shiny and ritzy and crowded and exciting. It looked big time. The river, the bridges, the skyline, the Landing, the Players Club, the stadium. All of it. Jacksonville didn’t look like Miami or San Diego or New Orleans or Houston but it looked nice. Real nice. Like it belonged.

So watching the Super Bowl from Jacksonville was pretty danged neat for this ex-patriot (pardon the pun) who is pushing forty and still remembers the THRILL of watching a surly old man get out of a helicopter at mid-field while we screamed for all we were worth all those years ago.

But the coin flip really did it. I glance up and think it’s a nice touch to let a local youngster flip the coin to start the biggest sporting event on earth. And then I see the jersey. He’s wearing a blue and white football jersey that says "Normandy" across the front. Normandy. As in Normandy Park. The neighborhood association where I learned what football was all about. Where I spent my childhood as the smallest center who ever snapped a football for the Normandy Dolphins. And let me tell you something. We were good. Won championships - or lost them at the end. After my games, I would hang around the park and watch other games all day. I’d take off my shoulder pads and watch, play touch ball and eat barbeque all day. Even as a 14 year old, I helped call the games from the announcer’s booth. Later, I helped coach the younger kids.

So suffice it to say, when I saw the Normandy jersey, I forgot all about the Landing and the river and the fancy-dan bridges and buildings and bars and restaurants that have sprung up in the past ten years as my hometown became part of the bigs. All I could think about was the westside, where weedy lots preceded golf greens and where a little boy learned to love football and yearned for a real live NFL team to come to town for more than just an exhibition game. For a second or two, I was little again. Wishing I was "big time".

So go Jacksonville. You’ve made it. An even though I’m a older now and a couple hundred miles away, watching on TV, I no longer feel bush league. I guess the bus ride was worth it.