By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

SAN DIEGO - In the parking lot, the bags are packed and the Marines are waiting. They will leave any moment now, and they will not stop until they are in Kuwait. Only a 10-minute drive down the road is the stadium for the Super Bowl. There the players talk of Sunday being a war.

Here in the parking lot at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar Thursday, they know a little bit about war.

In one part of town, the city dresses for the Super Bowl. The big game. The ultimate game. The life-or-death game

In another are young Americans, the same age as the players. They pack to leave this day for combat.

"You wait the whole season and you get to the end, and you know it's coming, and it's right in your backyard, and we're shipping out," Lance Corporal T.J. Medrano says.

"We need this game here, the way the world is going. It'll be hard not to see it.

"But I don't have my fingers on the buttons. I go when I'm called."

It has been a steady stream from Miramar to Kuwait. Word came down for this group only the last day or two.

They knew it would happen. They just didn't know when. So they had planned for the Super Bowl.

Medrano was going to go to a tailgate party.

Lance Corporal Richard Watkins was going to watch the game from a local bar.

Lance Corporal Cesar Lopez was going to see it with friends.

Corporal Julie Reed was going to go searching for autographs with her husband.

Instead, they are headed this day for the danger zone that is the Middle East. As their plane leaves home behind, it will almost fly over the stadium, which is getting its final touches.

"This is the worst absolute time to leave for a football game," Sgt. Chanin Nuntavong says.

"But I'm excited. This is why I joined the Marine Corps. To serve my country and do my duty. To provide freedoms, such as football, and parties."

Ah, the parties. Lopez was going to a good one.

"Sitting around with your buddies," he sighs, "that's the only way to watch the Super Bowl."

Lousy timing.

"Yeah, pretty much."

Watkins played football in high school back in Ohio. He says he is glad the waiting is over.

"I haven't slept in two nights," Reed says. "Did you hear they uncovered a plot to blow up our planes?"

The others nod.

Down the road, the players worry about punt coverage.

Here, they worry about bombs.

"It's a lot harder for us, a whole lot more on the line," Nuntavong says.

"Everybody is a little nervous," Medrano says. "You can say you're not scared, but everybody's got butterflies."

More Marines come by. Some hug loved ones, in long, tearful embraces.

Downtown San Diego waits for the arrival of the Raider Nation, and other free spenders. The party is about to begin.

Here, they don't seem to mind, to be so close, but now asked to go so far, and do so much.

"People need to enjoy everything they can," Lopez says.

"You get on with your life," Watkins says. "As long as somewhere in the back of their minds, they still think about us.

"If I get too corny, somebody punch me."

Assures Reed, "You're fine."

They hope to get Super Bowl tapes in Kuwait. They can see what all the fuss was about just a few miles down the road.

"They're the true tough guys of the world," Oakland tackle John Parrella had said earlier Thursday. "We're just playing a kids' game."

I shake their hands, and wish them Godspeed. I head back to a football game. They are headed somewhere else.

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