Super Bowl Family Fun Party

As I mentioned yesterday, Super Bowl at our house has become a pseudo-holiday complete with little traditions.  The serious football watchers are in the playroom, while the rest surround the t.v. in the family room.  Food is organized potluck complete with cake; see this year’s menu here.  These are our annual games with prizes that  keep both the real fans and the mildly interested (and even teenagers) engaged and excited to the very end of the game.

Super Bowl Bingo

Everyone’s favorite, my annual bingo cards are team specific but also include commercial tidbits plus related entertainment items.  I put out bowls of M&Ms to use as markers.  There are a few rules:

1. Play begins when the National Anthem is sung.
2. The item described on the bingo card has to have been actually observed (not assumed) by someone at the party and confirmed.
3. Appoint a referee (striped shirt not required) who will be the final arbiter before a prize can be selected.
4. A player can only win once.
5. Leftover M&Ms are the booby prize.

For your convenience and fun, we have uploaded 40 bingo cards that you can download and print for your own personal party.  Make sure that you have plenty of ink before you get your printer going.  Just print as many as you need and enjoy with our compliments.

Super Bowl Pool

So easy, you can buy this at Party City or make your own.  To do so, on a poster board draw a grid with 12 equally spaced horizontal lines and 12 vertical lines so that you have 11 columns and 11 rows in a grid.  Write the name of the AFC Champion (Baltimore Ravens this year) above the top of the grid and the name of the NFC Champion (San Francisco 49ers) down the left side.

Except for the 1st column and row, you will have 100 boxes to be filled in randomly with your guests initials.  Calculate how many boxes each of your guests can complete by dividing 100 by the number of guests.

Take 10 pieces of paper and on each write one digit from 0-9, fold and place in a bowl or bag.  At the start of the Super Bowl game when each box has been filled in, randomly draw the numbers and write them in the order drawn in each box in the 1st column of the grid.  Then put the numbers back in the bowl and repeat placing the numbers in the top row.

At the end of each of the four quarters, find the last digit of each team’s score and the box where they meet will contain the winner.  Save a big prize for the last of the 4 winners.

Prizes

The all-time favorite prizes at our house are scratcher lottery tickets.  Under the supervision of a parent if a minor, the anticipation of finding out whether you won something big is as much fun as winning the game in the first place.

Hope these ideas get you ready for your Super Bowl party.  We would love to know about any other games that you like to play during a football game/family party.  Please tell us about them in the comments box.

January 31, 2012