Many crisscrossing factors combine to make football difficult to watch. The rules are completely invented from scratch at the start of every contest. It stutters along with frantic, abrupt pauses that can last anywhere from an extremely long time to 600,000 hours. The players, in their matching capris and shiny plastic orbs, are virtually indistinguishable from one another, except those players with ponytails, who are merely indistinguishable from other players with ponytails. All of which is to say nothing of the hot shame you must, if you are in any way decent, feel as you watch the odds that these vigorous young men will be able to recognize the faces of their family members 20 years hence drop in real time as they patiently bash their precious brains in for your entertainment. The game is peppered with sudden silent moments where a person, having just collided at high speed with another person, lies motionless staring up toward the sky, or translucent ethylene tetrafluoroethylene ceiling, and all the thousands of people who, seconds ago, saw that man moving faster on his feet than they probably will, instinctively lean forward with dread-tensed stomachs and wonder if he will ever walk again.

As an alternative to the bashing, the men can express political dissent, and become unemployed.

However, against all reason and morality, we do love the Philadelphia Eagles, being, as they are, from Philadelphia. And although I had never attended a football game before Super Bowl LII—had never, that I can recall, even seen an entire game on TV—I felt a desperate, primal need for the Eagles to win. If the Eagles did not win, my life would be faintly but palpably worse, at least for a period of a few hours. At the end of Super Bowl, there are 53 men on television who look like they've just arrived home to find every single one of their possessions stolen, and 53 who are laughing, crying, dancing, and praying with delirious happiness. It was very important to me that on Sunday night the latter group would be the Philadelphia Eagles, but I had no desire to see the slog leading up to that point. I could go to sleep Sunday night at 6:30 P.M., wake up Monday morning to see the score, and be just as happy—happier, probably—than if I had been made to watch the entire game unfold.

Which is why my bosses thought it would be amusing to send me all the way to Minnesota in the middle of winter to watch the game in person.

I know a haze when I see one, but I also know an opportunity for a scam. I asked that, if I go, I be allowed an opportunity to win something of value to me, such as a personal mini fridge emblazoned with the Eagles logo for my cubicle in the office, retail value: $369.99.

And thus my Super Bowl Scavenger Hunt was born.

The terms of the hunt were thus: From a list of 25 items assembled by mysterious forces (a two-minute conversation with my co-workers), I must find or complete 13, representing one half of the list as well as the number of games the Eagles won during the 2017–2018 season. The only stipulation was that the hunt must take place entirely within the confines of the Super Bowl.

Here was my scavenger hunt list.