The Super Bowl, arguably the biggest sporting event in the world, will always carry special sentimental meaning for me.

This year’s big event was held Sunday, pitting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the defending-champion Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs were led by Patrick Mahomes, the greatest young quarterback in the NFL. The Bucs were led by their quarterback, Tom Brady, the Greatest Of All Time.

This was the 55th Super Bowl (LV). (Do you also wish the NFL would do away with the Roman numerals and just list the game with standard numbers? It would be reassuring to know there are others who weren’t paying attention when we were supposed to be learning Roman numerals in grammar school.)

My dad and I watched every one of the first 44 Super Bowls together from the first on Jan. 15, 1967 to XLIV on Feb. 7, 2010, the last year of his life. It was our annual tradition, and I turned down many Super Bowl party invitations over those years because of the enjoyment we both got from watching the big game together at my parents’ home.

Unlike me, he was not a passionate sports fans, so my assignment was to provide information on various strategies, players and officials’ rulings while he took in the game’s pageantry and drama.

I remember how happy he was when his favorite team, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League, defeated the American Football League champion Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first Super Bowl, played in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Dad didn’t know a lot about football, but had a great appreciation for excellence. Thus, his favorite team was the Packers, led by his favorite coach, the legendary Vince Lombardi, for whom the championship trophy would later be named.

His favorite player was the Packers’ rugged Hall of Fame fullback, Jim Taylor.

When the Packers also defeated the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, 33-14, many fans questioned the planned merger of the leagues into the NFL that occurred in 1970. After the Packers’ dominant victories over AFL teams in the first two Super Bowls, many thought the NFL was vastly superior to the upstart AFL. Everyone expected the worst rout yet in Super Bowl III, when the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, believed by some to be the best football team ever assembled, would surely bury the AFL’s New York Jets. The Colts won 13 of their 14 games that season, peaking with a resounding 34-0 win over the Cleveland Browns in the NFL Championship Game. Of their 22 starters, eight were All-:Pro players that season, and the Colts were favored by oddsmakers by a Super Bowl record 18 points, over the 11-3 Jets.

As mentioned, Dad’s sports knowledge was limited. He often confused offside with out of bounds in football.

And while watching a New York Knickerbockers basketball game on TV one day, he asked me if the Knicks’ No. 22 was a dirty player. No, I replied, puzzled. “Then why do they keep calling him Dave the Butcher?” He had mistaken the broadcasters’ references to Knicks star forward Dave DeBusschere, pronounced deh-BUSH-er.

Still, I thought he was goading me when he predicted in advance of Super Bowl III that the Jets would beat the heavily favored Colts. He said his many years as a stock broker had taught him not to always go in the same direction as everyone else.

He lived his life as a proud contrarian, but this prediction was ridiculous. The only other person predicting a Jets victory was their brash quarterback, Broadway Joe Namath, a big-talking playboy who wore white shoes and, for a time, a Fu Manchu mustache.

My prediction was that Bubba Smith, the Colts’ fearsome 6-foot-7, 265-pound defensive end, would put Namath in the hospital in the first quarter and lead the Colts to a 20- or 30-point victory.

Well, we all know what happened. The Jets dominated the game from start to finish, and Namath was named the game’s Most Valuable Player after leading his underdog team to a 16-7 victory in one of the biggest upsets in sports history.

Making the whole thing even more ironic was that I knew much more about sports than Dad did — or so I thought.

Years later, Dad took a liking to the New York Giants because they were coached by future Hall of Fame Coach Bill Parcells, whom he affectionately called “The Big Tuna.” He liked Parcells’ tough, no-nonsense leadership style that had taken the Giants from mediocrity to their first Super Bowl championship in 1987, a 39-20 win over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl, XX1 (21). His new favorite player was San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, a three-time Super Bowl MVP during the 1980s.

Dad also got great enjoyment from the magnificent Super Bowl halftime shows, again appreciating the spectacle and relying on me to fill him in about the performers.

“Now, who are these guys?” he asked as the 2010 halftime show began. I took some satisfaction in telling him it was The Who, a rock band he had predicted 40 years earlier wouldn’t be around at the end of the 1970s.

He still didn’t think much of their music, though, but grudgingly acknowledged their longevity. When he first saw Aerosmith’s lead singer, Steven Tyler, take the stage in 2001 donning sunglasses, long hair, earrings and a scarf, he scoffed: “What’s this guy’s story?” Like the rest of America, he was stunned by the “wardrobe malfunction” when Justin Timberlake pulled aside Janet Jackson’s costume, exposing her bare breast.

“What the hell was that?” he asked, sitting up in his chair. “Did you catch that?”

Despite that stunt, Dad saw the Super Bowl and its halftime show as classic Americana. At the climax of one show, replete with inspiring music and a spectacular fireworks display, he turned to me and said: “I wonder what they’re doing in the Soviet Union tonight.” We would disagree sometimes on the quality of the entertainment, but we both acknowledged that we’d never heard a more stirring rendition of the Star Spangled Banner than Whitney Houston’s pre-game performance during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

He had great respect for the beginnings of the New England Patriots’ dynasty that produced three of their six Super Bowl championships during his lifetime, and he admired both Brady and his Patriots coach, Bill Belichick; Robert Kraft, the Patriots’ shady owner, not so much.

Dad’s great human instincts made him one of the relatively few who knew all along that Kraft would never move the Patriots from Massachusetts to Connecticut, even though he promised state officials here repeatedly that he would do so back in the 1990s. It’ll be much easier to root for Brady and his new team now that he isn’t playing for the Patriots.

Dad passed away at age 80 on April 18, 2010, and while I have continued along with tens of millions of other Americans to watch the Super Bowl every year, the experience just isn’t the same without him.

Given his appreciation for excellence and longevity, I suspect we’d have both been rooting for the 43-year-old Brady to win his record seventh Super Bowl ring. I can hear him now: “Why do they call this guy, Brady, the goat?”

Hope you enjoyed the game, Dad!