BALAD, Iraq – Everything about the game was familiar, and nothing.

Scores of televisions were tuned to the Super Bowl at the U.S. military’s largest supply base in Iraq. Parties large and small sprang up in different parts of the base near Balad. Rifles were laid on floors and tucked in corners as toy footballs were passed back and forth instead.

After a relatively quiet day in Iraq, the biggest hardship was that kickoff was at 2:25 a.m.

Despite the hour, the game pulled together crowds of boisterous soldiers, even as it happily divided them.

Take the Illinois Army National Guard’s 1744th Transportation Company. As the game approached, an upstate-downstate split developed, with most in the usually tight-knit unit backing the Bears and a few supporting the Colts.

Soldiers and Air Force airmen munched on potato chips and chugged soft drinks as they waited for the pregame show to start well after midnight.

Like firefighters, members of the 1744th pull 12-hour shifts. When American vehicles are damaged, 1744th soldiers speed out from this base in armored vehicles. They protect the damaged trucks until wreckers can haul them away. Their motto, shouted with gusto at formal ceremonies, is “We rock the road!”

Sometimes they are busy. On their busiest shift, soon after arriving in September, there were three calls in a row as a string of roadside bombs hit supply trucks. But most nights, nothing happens, and they wait.

It was a night of waiting on the shift before the Super Bowl for the 1744th’s 3rd Security Escort Team (SET).

Its two women and 10 men crowded a concrete ready room with bunk beds, care-package junk food they’d laid in for months, and a big-screen television blaring comedy stand-up routines and episodes of “House.”

On New Year’s Eve, the members of 3rd SET were on a mission and missed a visit to Balad from 1985 Bears team members Jim McMahon and Kevin Butler. The same day, they got back too late for live coverage of the Iraqi government hanging Saddam Hussein. They were on the road when everyone else ate Thanksgiving dinner.

“We miss everything,” explained Staff Sgt. Joseph Gemayel, 24, the Chicago native who heads 3rd SET.

Throughout their deployment, members of the 1744th who were Bears fans watched in amazement and frustration as their football team crept closer and closer to the Super Bowl. They had cheered on the team for years, only to see it take off on a season where they found themselves in Iraq.

One soldier set up a life-size Brian Urlacher poster. Another has a Chicago Bears beanbag chair. Soldiers scoured online shopping sites for still more souvenirs as the impossible seemed to be happening. The Bears were in the Super Bowl.

A core group of troops watched each game on satellite television at their headquarters, or on live broadcasts at chow halls, or on DVD recordings mailed by family members.

With the thunder of F-16 fighter jets, Medevac helicopters and occasional gunfire in the background each day, the Illinois soldiers said they might be the most appreciative Super Bowl fans in the world.

The base’s biggest organized party was on the west side of the base, where the recreation center used for karaoke competitions and nine-ball tournaments was turned into a non-alcoholic sports bar.

Two members of the 1744th wrote “BEARS” on a blue and white toy Colts football and threw it back and forth.

But most of the unit’s soldiers crowded into their trailers across the base, where they watched in groups crammed into heated cubes that smelled of damp boots and deodorant spray.

They included Spec. Shaun Lamb, 26, of Chatham, a Colts fan whose anti-Bears comments annoyed his fellow soldiers.

Soldiers cheered so loudly in the military trailer park they call “J-Pod” that senior sergeants had to come over to quiet them. More whoops would erupt moments later around the corner.

“This is unbelievable. I’m in awe,” said Spec. Jerry Snyder, 19, of Verona, in a 10-by-10-foot trailer crammed with eight yelling soldiers.

Spec. Jimmie Wong-Soto, 37, a Pilsen native, declared himself somehow “buzzed” on non-alcoholic beer. Snyder asked if maybe he was just high on life.

“Maybe a little of both,” Wong-Soto said.

It was a night for that.

“It’s a damn good game,” said 33-year-old Spec. David Berry.

Spec. Luis Aponte, 36, of Chicago, agreed. “Tight,” Aponte said.

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(c) 2007, Chicago Tribune.

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AP-NY-02-04-07 2153EST