"So good! So good!" the people shouted.
At about the same time, 30 miles north in Scottsdale, about a thousand friends and colleagues of Patri ots' owner Bob Kraft - people with connections and fine seats for the Super Bowl - gathered on a 33-acre Arabian horse ranch designed to resemble a Moroccan citadel to dine on cornmeal crusted crab cakes and ahi tuna tartare.
They entered beneath a towering statue of a Bedouin warrior, sipped mango margaritas amid former players, and watched the horses perform. And when the party was over around 10 on Thursday night, many retired to the bar at the Patriots team hotel to drink $9 gin and tonics.
These are the two disparate worlds of Super Bowl XLII. Some people have connections and some do not. Some have tickets and some do not.
Some, like Paul Knox, vice president of sales at Granite City Electric in Quincy, will be attending the Krafts' post-game party today. And some, like Rockland resident Derek Shanahan who dresses up in a cape and mask on game days, are just lucky to be getting into the game at all.
In this sense, Knox, 51, and Shanahan, 26, are about as different as they can be. But together they are the face of Patriots Nation on Super Bowl Sunday: corporate on the one hand, rabid on the other. Both will be cheering for the Pats to beat the New York Giants today. They just have a different view of what it would mean to lose.
"Would it ruin the weekend? Absolutely not," said Knox, a Foxborough resident. He is a diehard Boston sports fan - "a homer," he calls himself - who would not even be watching the Super Bowl if the Pats were not playing in it. But this weekend, he conceded, the top priority for him is not necessarily winning the game. It is winning business.
"That," Knox said, "is what it's all about."
At times this weekend, Knox will be entertained, thanks to Granite City's sponsorship of the team. Other times, he will be doing the entertaining, hosting the electrical wholesale supplier's customers in town for the game. There will be cigars, golf, steaks, and, hopefully, memories that will linger with Knox's customers long after the Patriots win - or lose.
