The Ultimate Football Lover’s Wish List

With the Bowl Championship Series and the college football bowl season creeping up, it’s time to get fitted with the most awesome loot to make your party not suck. If you’re looking to get him something that will make him love you forever, any one of these will help. And if you see any of this stuff at your girlfriend’s office party, steal it with impunity and blame the help. Here is this year’s Ultimate Football Party Wish List!

Let’s face it – nothing should ever be phoned in, especially pizzas for a bowl game. If you’re going to have a bowl party, you’re probably going to have to barbeque as well. The Brinkmann 5 Burner Gas Grill with Side and Sear Burners can simultaneously cook coronary clogging 45 hamburgers of meaty goodness. It comes equipped with an LED illuminated control panel – perfect for those times when you feel like grilling at 1am.  HOME DEPOT $379.00

If you’re outside tending to the barbeque and those delicate casings on your favorite bratwursts, you will want to be prepared for the cold. The last thing anyone wants is to pry the turner out of your frostbitten hands to save what’s left of the meat. Never fear, Columbia has you covered. Literally. The winter jacket liners using the Omni–Heat thermal reflective system from Columbia Sportswear Company use good ol’ physics to reflect your body heat, keeping you up to 20% warmer. Previous incarnations of the technology used in other manufacturers left you feeling sweaty, so Columbia figured out how to make their jacket liners breathable.  REI $200 and up.

            Sometimes beer just doesn’t cut it. For the ladies, that is. Let’s face it, guys:  your GF can’t keep that rockin’ bod by chugging IPA with you and the bros all the time. So, liquor her up with alcohol goodness from Margaritaman.com. Margaritaman is a delivery service for margarita machines guaranteed to sauce up your party in no time. Their website recommends 1 machine for up to 100 people and boasts free delivery to many locations. You just provide the alcohol and a place to plug in. I recommend picking up some keg cups as you don’t want to be that guy with his face under the tap. MARGARITAMAN.COM $165 plus liquor.

Any good bowl party has to have a little gambling, no? Of course, the suckers always pick their favorite team or alma mater to win. And if you don’t have the right information before you shake hands then you could lose your pants faster than a couple of kids on prom night. So do yourself a favor and check out www.covers.com. They will give you the live line on every popular sport in America, including college basketball and football as well as the pros.  COVERS.COM  FREE! (unless you decide to try and bet the under without knowing what you’re agreeing to in which case, see prom night reference above.)

You got the grill going just fine. You’re nice and warm in your awesome jacket, sipping margaritas… things are going well, no? Well, if you don’t have a high-def big screen TV to watch that bowl game then your party will suck. Hard. Well Buck, let me tell you that a good TV will not come cheap, but you don’t have to lose your shirt buying the most expensive TV on the market. There are several competing technologies out there. LED, LCD, and Plasma all vie for your dollars. Some brands, like Sharp, have a nifty technology called “Quatron” which adds yellow to the standard RGB palate for creating images. But only about 8% of men and .5% of women are colorblind and would therefore benefit from this enhancement.  If you’re one of these people, you certainly want to buy one of those (who cares about the party goers when you can’t see so well, no?)  So which kind of TV is the best?

Hands down, bar none, the best technology for watching live action events (or movies and regular T.V.) is plasma. When a football streaks across the screen and the camera pans across the field to keep up with the action, LCDs and the LED lit LCD TVs will chop and leave a streak of color. That’s because they can’t refresh as fast as plasma (though they use some nifty technologies that make up for this and only the best trained eye will notice). Also, they have a horrible problem displaying the color BLACK. If you look at an LCD/LED, you’ll notice the brightly lit, grey areas in the corner of the screen. These are the backlighting lamps and they are impossible to avoid in images where there are dark shadows. Plasma, however, doesn’t have this problem. Also, plasma costs much less for the high-end models than its counterparts.

The TC-P55VT30 from Panasonic will give you true color reproduction (no red skin, true black, etc), and thanks to a refresh rate of 600hz, no streaks of color during action scenes. The technology (patented by the now-defunct Pioneer) is the best in the business. Be sure to pick up some silver or gold plated cables to get the best picture between your components. The 55” Panasonic will certainly make you the king of the couch quarterbacks. BEST BUY $2800

By Edward Burns

Edward Burns has worked in wireless retail sales for nine years, including seven years in management.  He left wireless to get his English degree at U.C. Berkeley, but still loves to keep up with the happenings of wireless equipment.  He is a gadget freak, builds his own computers, and is an early adopter of new technologies.