No wonder the game is a yawner.

As far as I’m concerned, it is not an official Super Bowl unless it’s played at the Superdome in New Orleans.

Get it? Super Bowl, Superdome.

So Sunday’s New England-Carolina game, which starts at 5:25 p.m., had better be a dandy or it’s going to send me to the cartoon network with Megan, my 4-year-old granddaughter, sooner rather than later.

If CBS is planning on holding my attention with the commercials, it can guess again.

Oh, sure, I’m hoping that Bruce Nelson, the 301-pound rookie for Carolina, somehow becomes the star of the show. But when was the last time you heard of a center becoming the star of any football show?

Especially the second-string center?

But, heck, I’m glad Nelson will be in uniform for the game. He was one of my favorite players on the 2002 Iowa team that had an 11-2 record and became the fourth-best in school history.

Nelson, who is from Emmetsburg, came to Iowa without a football scholarship, but earned one quickly. He had such an impact that he started 48 consecutive games as a Hawkeye.

I enjoyed interviewing Nelson while researching stories for my book "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines." He was at his best when laughing about how there were only two stoplights in Palo Alto County, where Emmetsburg is located.

But, small town or not, he said he wouldn’t trade growing up in Emmetsburg for anything else.

"There’s a great high school tradition there," he explained. "It’s a fabulous football program. Kids dream about playing for the Hawkeyes there."

Major college bowls have always been recognized as the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Cotton. The Super Bowl, of course, is the professional bowl.

I reached my goal. I attended one Super Bowl, covered more than a half-dozen Rose Bowls, several Sugar Bowls, two Orange Bowls and one Cotton Bowl. In addition, I made it to three Holiday Bowls, two Alamo Bowls, one Sun Bowl and one Freedom Bowl—to say nothing of the Pecan Bowl, where I watched old Parsons College play.

The Super Bowl was in 1981 at New Orleans, and sometimes I still marvel at how I pulled that one off. In those days, Maury White thought it wasn’t an official Super Bowl unless he covered it. But sports editor Gene Raffensperger got the message across to White that the paper could somehow stay afloat if he didn’t go to one of them.

So I went to New Orleans to get my take on Super Bowl XV, and did it the right way. I’d flown to the city famous for the French Quarter, beignets and Cajun food numerous times before, but this time I decided to make the trip by train.

I boarded the Amtrak in Osceola and first, of course, headed for Chicago. There was time to stop at Greek Town, which is near the train station in Chicago, for a late-afternoon Greek meal and –oh, what the hell – maybe even a glass or two of retsina.

Then it was on to the all-night journey by rail to New Orleans. First, south through the long state of Illinois, then the tip of Tennessee, then through the long state of Mississippi.

When I heard someone on the train bark out, "Jackson, Mississippi!" I figured there might eventually be light at the end of the tunnel.

There was. After an early-morning arrival, one tired sportswriter went to pick up his Super Bowl credentials before finally getting some sleep.

Of course, I sat in on the week-long player interviews, which included the usual bullshit that’s tossed around at every Super Bowl. You can believe about one-tenth of what’s said at those interviews. It’s what’s known as "Super Bowl hype."

Most of the players don’t like it, and neither do most of the writers.

The game was played Jan. 25, 1981, and it drew a crowd of 76,135 in the Superdome. The Oakland Raiders rolled past the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-10, behind Jim Plunkett’s three touchdown passes.

Plunkett had been a standout quarterback at Stanford—he won the 1970 Heisman Trophy--and I saw him at his best when he took his team to a 27-17 Rose Bowl victory over Woody Hayes’ Ohio State team.

In the Super Bowl, Plunkett was named the game’s MVP after completing 13 of 21 passes for 261 yards.

Former Iowa State player Keith Krepfle caught an 8-yard touchdown pass from Ron Jaworski for the Eagles.

All in all, it was a pretty good game in a great atmosphere. Somehow I don’t think it would have been as interesting had the game been played in Houston.

"Ron,

"Your stories about your 50^th reunion were hilarious," wrote a Des Moines woman who is a frequent contributor to this column.

[COMMENT: Thanks very much. I’ve told one or two people that the reunion column ranks at or near the top among the favorite columns I’ve written in the past couple of years. And I received a tremendous amount of assistance in putting that one together. Had I not gotten that, I wouldn’t have been able to do it because I was a no-show at the Sept. 13 event where the 1953 Wilson of Cedar Rapids graduates celebrated].

Lyle e-mailed me the other day and asked if my book was on the market. I told him it was. So he later wrote:

"Ron,

"Wanted to let you know they have a nice display at Barnes & Noble, and I picked up your book this evening. Am anxious to see what you have to say. Looks like easy reading, and I really need that. Hah!"

"Thanks for the column. It was very kind of you. I’m blushing….Thanks again. I’ll be reading."

"This is for Ron and especially for ‘Alive in Clive.’ I want to share some additional information about my critical letter that I sent after Wayne Morgan was hired as Iowa State’s basketball coach.

"When Bruce Van De Velde read my letter, he called me immediately to tell me his reasons for hiring Wayne Morgan as head coach. Our conversation was a little tense at first, but we are both professionals, and we handled ourselves just fine. I really admired Bruce for picking up the phone and calling me. He didn’t have to do that.

"I hope that all of my predictions concerning Coach Morgan are proven wrong. My biggest concern for the present Iowa State team is that so far the Cyclones have won only one game on the road (at Des Moines against Drake). I am encouraged that Iowa State pulled out a big come-from-behind win over Iowa.

"At Long Beach State, Coach Morgan’s teams could not win on the road, and could not pull out the com-from-behind victories.

"Ron, you are sure right. My decision to forego watching every minute of Iowa Hawkeye basketball this season has indeed saved me a lot of mental torment.

"By the way, is it too late for me to write some blistering opinions about the Rose Bowl game and the Sugar Bowl game?

"On the Iowa/Pierce issue….I agree with Al (Schallau).

"Pierre Pierce….The guy should be doing ten years in State Prison."

"Ron,

"Since I no longer watch Iowa Hawkeye basketball games on Saturdays, my son and I have been going to college games every Saturday (USC or UCLA or Pepperdine or Loyola Marymount). Tonight we were at the Long State Pyramid.

"This was the first game I have ever seen where the outcome was determined by a technical foul called on the VISITING team’s fans. The water bottle thrown from the stands onto the court clearly came from a cluster of U-C Irvine fans, and they caught the guy who threw the bottle.

"But despite that incident, the fact remains that U-C Irvine blew an 18-point lead and lost in overtime."

"Hello, Ron,

"Todd Sheridan here. I fly with Mark at the Air Guard, and my wife Charlene has opened That Irish Shoppe down in Valley Junction. We’d love to have you come in so we can share some Irish stories.

"I am also forwarding an interesting e-mail from Bob Fogarty, who as you can see is the president of the Central Iowa Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the group which sponsors the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown DSM. I thought perhaps, if you see fit, that some of your friends in the media may be interested in the fact that the city of Des Moines is basically pricing the Sons out of the parade business; as a small non-profit organization their financial resources are certainly limited. Because the city is in a budget crunch, it may result in this event either moving to the suburbs or disappearing completely.

"Why not just ask local downtown business for financial help? While certainly an option, we feel this event reaches far beyond a few downtown retailers and their customers. The city of Des Moines should take hold and sell this event as a draw of tourism and money."

Ed finally decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeds to have the time of his life—until the boat sinks.

He found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies….nothing. Only bananas and coconuts. After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

"I rowed over from the other side of the island," she says. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."

"Amazing," he says. "You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."

"Oh, this?" replies the woman. "I made the rowboat out of raw material found on the island. I whittled the oars from gum tree branches; wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a eucalyptus tree."

"But….but, that’s impossible," stutters Ed. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"

"Oh, that was no problem," replies the woman. "On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware."

Ed is stunned.

"Let’s row over to my place," she says. After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As Ed looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue-and-white.

While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, he could only stare ahead, dumb-struck. As they walk into the house, the says casually, "It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down please. Would you like to have a drink?"

"No. No thank you," he says, still dazed. "Can’t take any more coconut juice."

"It’s not coconut juice," the woman replies. "I built a still. How about a pina colada?"

Trying to hide his continued amazement, he accepts, and they sit down on her hand-woven couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, "I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."

No longer questioning anything, Ed goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollowground edge are fastened onto its end inside of a swivel mechanism.

Wow! This woman is amazing, he muses. What next?

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her.

"Tell me," she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him. "We’ve been out here for a really long time. I know you’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months. You know"……she stares into his eyes. He can’t believe what he’s hearing.

"You mean….." He swallows excitedly. "We can watch Iowa football?"