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A quiet Super Bowl Monday Morning

COMBAT OUTPOST FALCON, RAMADI, Iraq — Super Bowl Sunday isn’t quite complete without the commercials. But the soldiers here at COP Falcon, in south-central Ramadi, made do without. After all, for them, it was Super Bowl Early Monday Morning.

A handful of soldiers stayed up — or napped — until 2:30 a.m. to watch the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17, a game played 7,000 miles away, slumping in chairs in a former Iraqi home-turned-operations-center.

The soldiers, members of B Company, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor, was relatively subdued. Radio chatter from the TOC and the snores of sleeping Marines could be heard over the TV commentators. By the time the game ended around 5:30 a.m., most of the audience had fallen asleep in their seats or drifted off to their respective rooms.

There were no attacks that night, so the game wasn’t punctuated by the rattle of M2 .50 caliber machine guns. It wasn’t until after 11 a.m. that the insurgents took a shot at the COP with their AK47s. I wonder if they like football, too.

For those who missed the game, the soldiers said their spouses were going to record and mail the game — commercials and all — to Iraq. Enjoy the commercials.