Deliveries keep pizza man, Bears fan scrambling

With the kickoff an hour away, Tony Blanco was "definitely in the mood to drink, no doubt about it."

But Sunday afternoon and on into the evening, while his buddies and cousins and everyone else at his uncle Rob's house were parked in front of the TV with cold beers, the beefy Bridgeport man was on a different sort of blitz.

On what was perhaps the busiest day for pizza delivery drivers in the Chicago area since 1986, Blanco, a driver for Connie's Pizza on South Archer, criss-crossed downtown and the South and Near West sides with one concern: to bring hungry Chicagoans their food fast and hot.

Sure, Blanco, 29, was missing one of the biggest sports events in years. Still, in his family, the Super Bowl is a bigger deal than Thanksgiving.

"We actually stopped celebrating Thanksgiving last year," he said. "But we still celebrate the Super Bowl."

He had the radio in his red truck tuned to the game, with the volume turned way up. His timing was impeccable.

Parking in front of a high-rise near Mercy Hospital -- his eighth stop of the afternoon -- Blanco took his key out of the ignition for a split second, but he quickly turned the car back on.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he yelled, leaning in to hear the game's opening moments. "Devin Hester just ran back the football. That was awesome! That was awesome!"

Customers' spirits were running high, too. A woman in the UIC area gave Blanco an $11 tip for her $42 order of pizza, garlic and chicken wings. A woman in Bridgeport gave him $20 on her $56 tab.

Tom Cassell, a Chicagoan now living in Florida, shook Blanco's hand in the lobby of the Hyatt McCormick Place while picking up his rib dinner -- and gave him two tickets to the Chicago Auto Show.

"I hope you get to go watch the game," Cassell, an events management consultant, told Blanco.

"My wife's taping it for me," Blanco replied.

By the third quarter, he had made $120 in tips.

A good night, no matter what the score.

jfuller@suntimes.com