Can You Find Love at A Super Bowl Party?

Are men into women who are into sports? As long as you’re not trying to get with them at a Super Bowl party, then yes. Or so a recent survey would suggest. It’s Just Lunch, a dating service for professional singles (that appears to have a primarily heterosexual user base), found that nearly 60 percent of men love that you love sports, because, well, they love sports. So, a Super Bowl party would seemingly be the perfect place to meet a guy, no? He likes football, you like football — or if you don't exactly like football, perhaps you’re amongst the 35 percent of women in the survey who said you’ll study up on the teams before the game so you can speak intelligently on the subject.

If you’re at the same party you probably have some mutual friends (so hopefully he’s not a total douche, or worse a crazy stalker), and there’s sure to be plenty of booze to make everyone real friendly. But before you start thinking about your romantic prospects this Sunday, let me tell you something — the odds are not in your favor, so you should probably just enjoy the beer and nachos like you were already planning on doing.

It’s Just Lunch polled 1,400 singles to predict the odds of meeting your next mate at a Super Bowl party, and the results show it's unlikely. In fact, 82 percent of men and women surveyed said they’d never met anyone they were interested in dating at a Super Bowl party.

That’s because, if it's a male mate you're looking for, he's more likely to be at home on his couch than hanging out at your friend’s house passing you the bowl of chips. The most popular answer for men when asked where they preferred to watch the game was in their own living room, whereas nearly half of the women in the poll would rather be at a party or special event for the game.

Even if he is at the party and your hands collide when you both reach for the dip bowl, odds are he isn’t thinking about meeting someone new. Over 30 percent of the guys polled said they’re at the party solely to watch football, not meet women.

So maybe Super Bowl love isn't on the agenda, but that doesn't mean sports can't bring people together romantically. I once heard a sports talk radio host discussing on air how he didn’t want to date women who liked sports, because it was what he talked about all day at work; the last thing he wanted to do was talk sports at home. I was then completely baffled as I listened to guy after guy call in to say they too wanted to steer clear of sports-loving women. Apparently, a woman who likes sports might distract them from the action on the field or ask to tag along to the game (that's a bad thing?).

Color me surprised. I always thought men liked women who were into sports — you know, common interests and all that. Seriously, they say so in surveys. I’ve seen it! But, there I sat…a sports business reporter who was completely single.

So, I did what any modern lady would do. I called out the sports radio host on Twitter.

That was three and a half years ago. This March, I’m marrying that sports talk radio host. Turns out he saw my tweet, and as he now tells the story, I was cute enough to outweigh the fact that I too made my living based on sports. Did I mention we host a sports talk radio show together? Or that we talk about sports all the time?

And I can't say I'm surprised that these guys aren't interested in looking for romance at a Super Bowl party — I've always been much more interested in watching the game, too.