Planning an overseas trip makes one delusional

I meant to write this three weeks ago, but with no football on this weekend as we anticipate the Super Bowl, I figured it was okay to post now.

I'll be taking a return trip to Malaysia next week. It could very well be the last time my mother gets to see her mother, and she really wanted me to go with her. Not that she had to twist my arm very much. I went for the first time four years ago and have been wanting to go back ever since.

For one thing, I haven't seen that side of my family very much. And as Ms. A. has reminded me since the trip became official, I didn't write a lot about that last trip and would like to do better this time around.

What does any of this have to do with football? Well, nothing — except that I will be missing the Super Bowl. I suppose there's a chance I can watch it during our layover in Seoul, South Korea, if I'm at all lucid after a 13-hour flight. Oh, of course I'll be lucid. I'll sleep that whole flight, man.

As we were finalizing the details of our trip with the help of my sister three weeks ago, hours before the Detroit Lions were playing the New Orleans Saints in a playoff game, I mentioned that we'd be missing the Super Bowl.

Shoulders shrugged. Then a sentence I probably should've been slapped for uttering came out of my mouth?

"But what if the Lions make it to the Super Bowl?"

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Yeah, I know. Although that wasn't as outlandish a question this year as it would've been in years past. Beating the Saints was in the realm of possibility. Would the Lions have advanced any further in the NFC playoffs? Probably not, but if they'd have beaten the Saints, they'd have had a shot.

However, when I asked that question, the idea of the Lions winning a Super Bowl championship, achieving triumph in perhaps the biggest sports event in the world, felt very real. Why? Because it would just figure that the team I've rooted for and suffered with for my lifetime as a sports fan would finally break through when I was out of the country and unable to watch it.

Coming back to the United States after the Lions had won the Super Bowl would've felt like Cillian Murphy at the beginning of 28 Days Later, when he awakens from his coma and discovers that the world has been through a catastrophe. What happened? Why are the streets empty? I wouldn't have recognized the place I used to know. 

With the Saints winning 45-28 over the Lions, I don't have to worry about that. Thanks, Drew Brees? I'll just have to watch "The Big Game" and all those commercials when I get back. Gotta remember to set that DVR.