The Big Game Sunday
Reba McEntire, star of the sitcom “Reba” between 2001 and 2007, will be singing the National Anthem at the beginning of the show.
Post Malone, artist who was on a flight that blew two tires back in 2018, will be singing America the Beautiful.
Andra Day, singer at the 2016 DNC Convention, will be performing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.
Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 PM, Mountain Time.
Allegiant Stadium, home of 2021’s Summerslam, will be hosting the game.
Usher will be headlining the Halftime show. He was last there in 2011 when The Black Eyed Peas were headlining the Halftime show.
Man, remember The Black Eyed Peas? What were we thinking? I still get irritated when I remember the “Where is the Love?” video where apl.de.ap vandalized a city bus in front of the cops and then asked “whatever happened to the values of humanity?” when he got caught.
Where was I? Ah, yes. The Sup, er, The Big Game.
The Kansas City Chiefs, last year’s The Big Game winner, will be defending their championship belt against The San Francisco 49ers.
Kansas City has Patrick Mahomes as Quarterback and Andy Reid as coach. San Francisco has Brock Purdy as Quarterback and Kyle Shanahan as coach.
Kansas City Tight End Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift. San Francisco Tight End George Kittle has been married to Claire Kittle (née Till) since 2019.
Every year, various pundits have the latest Madden game simulate the Superbowl and Forbes says that Madden gets it right 2/3rds of the time. That’s better than a coin flip. This year, different outlets have picked different winners. Some set up the simulation and Kansas City won, others had San Francisco win. The only thing that everybody agrees on is that it will be a close game.
So expect a blowout, I guess.
WHO DO YOU THINK WILL WIN?
(Most of the entertainment stuff was lifted from CBS and the stuff that wasn’t was lifted from Wikipedia. The stuff about the teams was lifted from Wikipedia.)
(Featured image is “Rock Dennis tackles Taylor Wardlow” by John McStravick. Used under a Creative Commons License.)
I think Kyle Shanahan is hands down the best coach in the league but my gut says KC wins it. Going on the road and finding ways to beat the Bills and the Ravens makes me think they will do something similar here. We’ve seen what happens when Purdy and the 49ers offense struggle and it’s that they lose, whereas even when KC’s offense is unable to do much the defense can hold the opponent down.Report
I’m guessing that we will have an early San Francisco implosion, KC will have a 10 point lead that they’ll be able to maintain for the rest of the game (with occasional breaks from a field goal or touchdown here or there that will be immediately matched).
I am basing this on nothing more than one of the Madden simulation summaries I read.Report
That’s sort of similar to what happened against the Ravens. Chiefs scored just enough, the Ravens’ offense never got going, and then turned the ball over on the two really big opportunities they had.Report
Scratch that, reverse it.Report
San Francisco defense showed up today. Huh.Report
The guy who has 0-0 on the square board is happy.Report
The guy who has the 9-9 square is happy?Report
There’s a Twister sequel?
“Because you demanded it!”, I guess.Report
And they broke Jason Elam’s record? This is obscene.Report
In my youth, I would have thought that getting injured because you were excited would be funny/absurd.
Now? It’s, like, yep. That can happen.Report
Scoring play the 49ers just ran was incredible.Report
When I played Cyberball 2072, they had a “powerback” that could also pass the ball.
That’s what I thought of when I saw that play. “That’s from Cyberball!”Report
Definitely had a video game feel to it. Developed so slowly I can’t believe it worked.Report
And as with all trick plays like that, it darn near didn’t; the only good thing you can say about the forward-pass part of the play was that Purdy caught it.Report
I understand that there is one bull$#!+ high-school play every Superbowl.
It’s always a delight when it works.Report
I mean, it’s the Super Bowl, you might as well have fun with it!Report
Sports radio in Chicago was talking about the long odds on a non-QB touchdown pass prop bet. Someone made a lot of money yesterday.Report
McCaffery.Report
Not to politics on this but that RFK Jr commercial was some weird sh*t.Report
Oh, we can get into politics.
This game is a metaphor for the November election, after all.Report
JB would’ve liked it… it had a Fallout retro vibe to it.Report
It was definitely well done artistically but your comparison is very apt in that it played more like a guerilla style trailer for a movie or video game than a political ad.Report
OOOH!!! THERE’S LANA DEL REY!!!
I love her.Report
My wife and son thought the blond next to Taylor was Mahomes’ wife, but I thought not.
I asked my daughter who was *not* watching the game if she knew who was in the booth with Taylor? She did: Blake Lively and Ice Spice… and Lana. So I won the bet, but am now a little concerned about my daughter.Report
ROLLER DISCO!!!!
I am no longer making fun of this in my head.Report
That’s the second injury. Goodness gracious.Report
Third injury!
Is that normal?Report
YES! WE HAVE A STREAKER!!!!Report
Report
Have we forgotten already what streaking is?Report
Apparently so. Sadly.Report
They’re going to start a new game?
This is the second OT in history, apparently.
If they go through three OTs, can it end in a tie?Report
If a field goal decides the game, here’s your headline:
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22.”Report
Interesting how this is the…fourth, I think? Anyway, multiple games this postseason have been decided by a missed kick (either a missed FG or a blocked PAT).
Someone did point out that this Super Bowl was a victory for Special Teams, and I think you can just say that about the whole postseason this year.Report
That was a really good game.Report
Yeah, it was a good story. Exciting wackiness up front and then everyone settles down and gets it done.Report
Okay. KC won. It was close AF. Pretty good game, I guess.
I mean, what’s the definition of the best game? The highest scoring one? The one where you have no idea what’s going to happen next? That means that the best game of the year could happen in, like, week 4 between two teams that don’t make the playoffs.
For a game that didn’t have the Broncos in it, this was a pretty good game. It had the bad guys take the lead early and the good guys came up from behind to win it in OT.
And Lana Del Rey was there.Report
A commentor on Twitter summed it up in a way I agree with: “three quarters of WTFootball and then two quarters of really good offense”. So a good game for people who tuned in late.Report
Unless it is your team playing, in which case the most fun game to watch is a totally one-sided butt kicking by your guys, I think the best is one that is interesting and exciting right up to the end. This SB delivered that.Report
No.Report
Let the record show that I was not watching the Super Bowl before it was a political thing.Report
Handful of funny commercials last night.
My personal favorite was Matt Damon/Ben Affleck as they evolve into pure memes of themselves for Dunkin Donuts
https://news.yahoo.com/j-lo-tom-brady-matt-205200825.html
Most disappointing? The E*Trade babies… they just don’t seem to get that the whole thing that made the originals funny was the improv over the raw baby footage. The CGI staging with babies as props entirely misses the point, Shankopotomus.Report
Definitely the best of the bunch. What I found so surprising was the roster of A-list celebs who were doing TV commercials. It must be pretty lucrative.Report
Myself, I put the change back when Mercedes did the commercial that included Willem Dafoe, Usher, Kate Upton, and the original Sympathy For the Devil. Suddenly, Super Bowl commercials could be art (well, the 90-second version; the 60-second one was kind of choppy). It didn’t have to be embarrassing to be in a Super Bowl commercial.
I’ve always wondered what the Stones charged for the one-time license for that commercial :^)Report
One thing that struck me was how there were not nearly as many sports-betting commercials as I’d expected.
Like, I think we had more commercials for Temu than we did for betting — and the whole “Kick Of Destiny” thing seemed almost like it got cut for time, like after weeks of buildup the commercial itself was maybe ten seconds?Report
I’d like to think they were developing a sense of propriety about this stuff, but I am sure that is not true. The open question is whether they’re going to be so aggressive as to push the pendulum back in the other direction on sports gambling. It’s one thing to say small time betting will no longer be criminal. Having casinos where such activity is allowed within the 4 walls for those who voluntarily enter is something I would expect to be mostly tolerated. But endlessly peppering all of civilization with the ability to blow money on idiotic bets on your smart phone like they have been? That could prompt a backlash.Report
The NFL controls the broadcast rights, and I suspect leans heavily on the network regarding commercial content. And the last thing the NFL wants to be seen to be doing is encouraging sports betting on its premier annual game.Report
That could be based on nothing more than the price of getting such a commercial. $7M per 30 second spot, the google tells me.
Why do that when you can spend $50K for 30 seconds during Smackdown?
I’ll keep my eye open during RAW tonight. I betcha* that there are just as many sports betting commercials as ever.
*Gambling Problem? Call 1-877-8-HOPENY.Report
This was my thought. Legalized gambling is a state-by-state thing. $7M for a 30-second national spot probably isn’t nearly as many eyeballs who can actually gamble per buck as buying more and much cheaper slots in regional/local games. Also too, I think the network is much stingier about slots reserved for the local affiliates during the Super Bowl.
Anyone have any idea if the California teams’ regional games — California doesn’t have legal sports betting — are saturated with gambling ads to the same level as the Broncos’ games?Report
No gambling ads tonight!
I was surprised.
Now that the The Big Game is behind us, I guess that we just don’t have anything to bet on until March Madness.
Why buy an ad? Save a little money for a couple of weeks. Turn the machine back on in a week or two.Report
The NFL has a one gambling spot per quarter policy. Preseason through the Super Bowl, doesn’t matter.
It’s complete hypocrisy of course. No single sports league benefits more from gambling than the NFL, legal or otherwise. But they have a very long history of distancing themselves while embracing gambling at the same time.
From Jimmy the Greek to Las Vegas hosting the Super Bowl, the common thread is pretending gambling isn’t one of the pillars the league was built upon.Report
The Premier League’s relationship with gambling is interesting to me. Notably, Brentford’s star striker Ivan Toney was suspended from the league for 9 months for gambling. Apparently he was betting on himself to score goals–which ok? It’s not like he’s betting on his own team to lose, which as a striker he could certainly influence (this carries a lifetime ban). Anyway, while the league was busy suspending Toney, Brentford was cashing the checks from their kit and ad hoardings sponsor, Hollywoodbets.
Also HOW ABOUT THEM CHIEFS????Report
Without know one damn thing about soccer, is that a position that would allow him to take unlikely to score shots in hopes of sneaking one past the goalie?Report
Yes, definitely, but the end result is Toney trying to help his team win, which is what he should be doing anyway.Report
Is that for national spots? What about regional ones? Does it include local ads?Report
Yeah, because I remember a lot of gambling ads in every other game I’ve seen on TV, which is why it struck me as odd that there weren’t very many in the Super Bowl broadcast.Report