DETROIT - As recently as this morning, I was planning on attending Jerome Bettis' enshrinement in Canton in five years. As of this evening, I wouldn't deign to brake if he stepped in front of my car. A timeline:
7 days ago - I see a Bettis-hosted Super Bowl party listed on Ticketmaster, theme TBD. I buy an $80 ticket on faith.
5 days ago - The theme is chosen: bowling. Ew.
Today, 4pm - I depart my Toledo hotel for the hour drive to Detroit so that I may attend his stupid bowling party.
5:30pm - I pay $25 to park.
6:30pm - Just in case, I buy a $50 autograph football (the unthrowable ones with the slick vinyl panels). Unable to find a Sharpie earlier, I give the clerk five bucks for hers. Who knows when I'll ever be able to get Jerome's autograph again?
7:30 - Bored and sitting in my car, I kill time until the 10pm stupid bowling party.
9pm - I arrive at the location of the party to find a ludicrously long line for Will Call. Rather than wait in an unmoving line in a driving rain in 35 degree weather, I hole up in a cafe. I'll wait out the line.
10pm - The party is officially supposed to begin. The line hasn't budged, at least not in any good way. It now extends two city blocks. The freezing rain is falling harder, pelting us all. Several hundred people are very cold, very wet, and very angry. I'm told that Jerome arrived in a limo with a police escort.
10:35pm - Thinking about the hour's drive home, and observing that the line has moved about 10 feet and has gotten even longer, I decide that Jerome can keep my eighty bucks. I also pointedly decide where he can keep them.
10:40pm - I'm across the street, walking to my car, when a motorcade pulls up—a gleaming white limo and a bunch of cops. "Cool," I think. "It must be Roethlesberger or Polamalu." I watch in shock as Bettis exits the building and ducks into the limo, and I listen to the invective being shouted as the limo passes the furious crowd, still waiting in line for no apparent reason.
