Super Bowl LV

On Sunday, Susan and I sat down and watched the Super Bowl. I watch the Super Bowl every year, regardless which teams are playing. The Super Bowl contains the two best teams, the best commercials, and the best halftime performances. If I only watched one NFL game each year, it would be the Super Bowl.

Sometimes on Super Bowl Sunday, Susan will prepare a bunch of food. Rotel cheese dip, meatballs, pigs in a blanket and homemade sliders are yearly favorites. This year, Susan picked up Chinese food and Morgan made chocolate chip cookies. Saturday I had two friends over and I ate way too much Saturday night, which didn’t leave me much of an appetite on Sunday.

Super Bowl LV (55) took place at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The stadium’s normal capacity is just over 65,000 people, although I read the crowd was limited to 25,000 people. Another 30,000 seats were filled with cardboard cut-outs that were sold for $100 each. I have sworn that I will quit judging or commenting when I see others not wearing masks when they are in close quarters, but repeated shots of people in the stands and, worse, packed tightly into sports pubs enjoying the game without masks made me cringe. I hate that this is the lens through which I view the world, and am making an effort to worry more about what I and my family do, and less about others.

While I did not have a preference as to the outcome of the game, I love, love, love it when things go against the established narrative. Throughout the week, most sports outlets picked the Kansas City Chiefs to win the game. The Chiefs, who were favored by three points, were the returning champions. Their quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, was last year’s MVP. Commentators cited the fact that the Chiefs have been to the playoffs six years in a row, as opposed to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who haven’t been in 14 years. Also noted was the fact that the Chiefs already beat the Bucs once during the regular season. Super Bowl LV was promoted as “the best quarterback of today vs. the best quarterback of all time.” Much was made of the fact that the first time Tom Brady went to the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes was only six years old.

That being said, never dismiss the drive and motivation of an aging sports legend. At 43 years old, Tom Brady was the oldest player to ever play in a Super Bowl. He, along with his former teammate Rob Gronkowski (who came out of retirement for the chance to play with Brady again), had something to prove. On Sunday, just a few minutes into the first quarter when Brady hooked up with Gronk for their first of two touchdown passes, they proved it.

It was hard to tell if the Chiefs crumbled under the pressure or the Buc’s defense was just too much for them (or, according to a popular Facebook theory, “the refs were pulling for the Bucs”), but for most of the game everything went Tampa’s way. Mahomes spent a good portion of the second half scrambling to get away from Tampa linemen and throwing passes as he was falling toward the turf. The longer the game went on, the more the Chiefs fell behind. The Chiefs went into halftime down 6-21, and things only got worse from there. At the beginning of the second half, the Chiefs scored a field goal only to be answered with a touchdown by the Bucs. That was largely the story of the evening. By the end of the game, Tom Brady had won his 5th Super Bowl MVP, and the Kansas City Chiefs became the third team ever to not score a touchdown in the big game.

While I wasn’t rooting for any team in particular, I could relate more to Brady as being the old guy at the game. I didn’t recognize half of the celebrity cameos that appeared in this year’s Super Bowl commercials, and had to ask my wife who the halftime performer was. (I’m guessing Tom Brady doesn’t know who The Weeknd is, either.) Despite all that, I enjoyed watching the game while sitting next to my wife and snacking on Chinese food and chocolate chip cookies, and look forward to watching next year’s game, regardless of who’s in it.