Students Celebrate Patriots’ Win

Stadium seating, kegerators and 40 people packed into one Currier suite—it must be a special Super Bowl in Cambridge.

Many Harvard students spent Super Bowl Sunday watching the New England Patriots upset the St. Louis Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI.

“The Pats rule,” said Emily C. Adkins ’02-’03, amid a mass of screaming Patriot fans, moments after Adam Vinatieri kicked the game-winning field goal.

“I knew they would come up big,” she said. “I had faith.”

Following the conclusion of the game, hordes of screaming Patriots fans spilled into Harvard Square, stopping traffic for over an hour.

The Cambridge and Harvard University Police Departments responded to the scene as students and locals mounted cars and blocked traffic on JFK St. before dispersing at 11:45 p.m.

“It’s nuts,” said Kevin P. O’Keefe ’04. “If the Red Sox won the World Series I’d have to kill someone, but right now this is pretty fun.”

With a hometown team in the Super Bowl for the first time in five seasons, the excitement surrounding the game was unusually high.

“We would have had the party even if the Pats weren’t in it,” said Mark J. Franklin ’02, who co-hosted a big Currier bash, “but there is a lot more emotion this way.”

Franklin and his roommates hosted a four-TV, two-keg party filled with New England supporters. Students crowded onto five couches, stood in corners and curled up on the floor while drinking Bud Light out of personalized mugs and jumbo-sized soup containers.

Though many of the fans sported Patriots t-shirts, Ryan M. Fitzgerald ’02 chose more creative attire, wearing a plaid shirt, hard hat and construction boots.

“The Patriots are a blue-collar team and I am representing that,” Fitzgerald said.

Patriot supporters were in the majority at many Harvard parties. Chants of “P-A-T-S, Pats, Pats, Pats!” were bellowed following every big Patriots play at the Currier party and all over campus.

James J. Marett ’03, a New England native, hosted a party in his Leverett suite to cheer on the Pats in what he said was a rare opportunity for a championship.

“The thing is, Boston sports fans aren’t used to their teams doing well,” said

Marett, whose room was stocked with beer, chicken wings and too many people to fit on his couches. “So, when they do, they go kinda crazy.”

Some students supported the Rams just to spite their friends.

“I don’t really care who wins,” said Zachary M. Puchtel ’05, while sitting among Boston-area friends crammed into his Grays suite.

“I just really don’t want the Patriots to win.”

But with brand-new commercials and glitzy halftime shows, the Super Bowl drew attention even from students who care little about football.

Amy M. Kelley ’03 and her group of friends admitted before the game to being particularly excited about the long-anticipated Britney Spears Pepsi commercial.

The Pepsi spot appeared during the the game’s second commercial break and Marett’s room became hushed as the group watched Spears as a star from each decade from the ’50s to the present.

But the crowd was disappointed.

“Okay, that was the worst commercial ever,” said Ryan C. Schenning ’03, as Spears hit her last note.

—Staff writer Daniel E. Fernandez contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Lande A. Spottswood can be reached at spottsw@fas.harvard.edu.