They go like this: She's walking down the aisle during her wedding today, which is poorly attended because so many people decided to watch you-know-what. The people who do attend are wearing headsets. Halfway down the aisle, three or four guys leap up and pump their fists.

The Bucs just scored!

What will Longo be thinking about as she walks down the aisle?

"Hopefully my husband-to-be, but probably the score," she said.

[Times photo: Fred Victorin]
In November, Heather Longo and Jerry Robinson picked today to get married, thinking the NFL took a week off before the Super Bowl.

The wedding of Longo, 30, and Jerry Robinson, 36, is but one example of how today's NFC Championship Game has pushed its way into the lives of just about everyone in the Tampa Bay area. You can love the Bucs, hate the Bucs, be utterly indifferent to the Bucs, but on this day, it is darn hard to ignore the Bucs.

That's why Robinson was looking for a TV he could wheel into the wedding reception at the East Bay Country Club in Largo. It's why, if you attend today's concert at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg with a folk/rock duo named Trout Fishing in America, you can expect an aide to periodically announce the score. It's why malls and grocery stores will resemble caverns.

And it's why Pat Fenda has consented to do something she would otherwise never consider: Turn on the TV at her party.

Fenda is an arts person, not a sports person, and the owner of the Tampa company Strictly Entertainment. She was so thrilled when the award-winning Broadway show the Lion King finally hit Tampa, she assembled more than 50 friends and bought a bloc of tickets for tonight's 6:30 show.

She invited everyone to a preshow party at her house with fun Lion King-themed foods such as giraffe tongues -- turkey rollups -- and tiger tails -- salami and cheese strips.

As it turns out, her preshow party conflicts with the Bucs game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Less than half of her group is expected to show up. For those who do, she agreed to turn on the game.

By 6 p.m., of course, the game may still be close and the crowd may still be glued to the TV. "You know what? I'll be leaving and they can just lock the house. I am not missing that opening," Fenda said.

With similar conviction, Dave Fanning does not plan to miss a note of today's 2 p.m. jazz concert featuring singer-pianist Yve Evans. Fanning is vice president of the Suncoast Dixieland Jazz Society.

But that won't stop him from hauling his 13-inch black-and-white television into BanquetMasters in Pinellas Park so he can watch the game without sound.

"I think at least three of us who are going to go there are going to have our own little personal TVs," Fanning said.

But even a game that has attracted so much attention from fans and media does not make time stand still.

Several events are scheduled today as part of the leadup to Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Today's events include a step show, featuring several area high school and middle school teams performing highly choreographed routines popularized at historically black colleges.

One of the event organizers, Hillsborough Sheriff's Deputy Sonja Shepherd, said the Bucs game won't change anything about the long-planned event, which starts at 3 p.m. at the University of Tampa.

Another event planned for today is the National Martin Luther King "Drum Major for Justice" Festival of Bands. It begins at 5 p.m. at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.

And the show must go on for members of the Florida Orchestra, who are scheduled to perform "Nature: A Symphony of Sounds" at 3 p.m. -- game time -- at the Center for the Arts at River Ridge in New Port Richey. More than 700 had purchased tickets late last week.

That doesn't mean everyone's happy about it.

"There'll be a lot of people anxious to rush to their cars at intermission and check scores on that one, I'm sure," said Jeff Bram, the orchestra's artistic administrator. But he's looking on the bright side.

"I actually am thankful for a distraction on that day, because I'm a lot more nervous about this game than I was last weekend."

Longo is nervous too, as if a wedding wasn't enough to bring on anxiety.

The irony is that she and Robinson are both Bucs fans with plenty of Bucs paraphernalia, and they really care about the game. Robinson normally works Sundays, and always wears his Brad Johnson jersey. Longo's favorite player is Warren Sapp.

In November, they scheduled their wedding date with the playoffs in mind, mistakenly thinking the NFL would be idle the weekend before the Super Bowl. But they decided not to change the date.

"Football is my favorite sport, I love football," Longo said. "I will plan around anything to watch my games, and my husband-to-be, he's even more so. But the bottom line is, this is my wedding day."

The timing has caused consternation among guests.

"A few people said, 'Look, I got to watch that game,' " Robinson said. His brother, a "mega-Bucs fan" who will be the best man, initially told him: "You've got to change the date."

Through it all, Longo and Robinson see one potential benefit.

"There would be nothing sweeter," Longo said, "than if they won on my wedding day."

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