Things You Otter Know About Super Bowl LIX
E-A-G-L-E-S! EAGLES! K-E-N-D-R-I-C-K! KENDRICK!
If you don’t care about football I encourage you to open up this post in your browser (or go to the TYOK homepage, where you’ll easily find this post.) Then you can hit the ladder on the left-hand side that takes you to the section you want to read. See this example, from last week’s Grammys recap:
I’ll try to make this as entertaining as possible, buy if you’re just here for the Kendrick talk—don’t worry, we’ll get there! (Gotta save the best for last.)
The pregame
The big 4 American networks—NBC, FOX, ABC, and CBS—rotate Super Bowl broadcast rights every year and they always make a big deal of it when they do air it. This year FOX went all out and covered Bourbon Street in New Orleans (which hosted the game this year) in purple carpet, and then they had the FOX NFL Sunday crew yap about the game for *checks notes* four and a half hours?!
I think that is a crazy long amount of time for a pregame show, but I won’t complain. The FOX pregame crew is, for my weak Canadian dollar, the most tolerable pregame crew. I find Gronk funny and Terry Bradshaw an endearing old boomer. Imagine if NBC did a four-hour edition of Football Night in America! Sometimes you gotta count your blessings.
The commentary team
I know no one care sbout this but I have to nerd out for a quick second. This year FOX spent a ludicrous amount of money hiring Tom Brady as their new #1 analyst alongside play-by-play commentator Kevin Burkhardt (a consummate pro, I have zero complaints for him).
And I get it, it’s Tom Brady, he’s the GOAT, and so he brings a true brand and a gravitas that no broadcaster at any other network can even come close to. But I also feel like they did Greg Olsen dirty, you know? Greg Olsen deserved to remain the #1 guy. Although calling games with Joe Davis isn’t much of a demotion at all. Joe Davis is incredibly talented. Forget Freddie Freeman, Joe Davis was my MVP of the last World Series.
The commercials
For all of our free healthcare, Canada’s dropped the ball when it comes to Super Bowl commercials. I deliberately watched the game through our cable package’s FOX Buffalo affiliate (shoutout KUTV) and was still met with an onslaught of Tim Hortons and FanDuel ads. The only American one I’ve seen as of writing is from Nike, which was awesome. If I was Prime Minister, my first order of business would be to solve this problem.
The game
I honestly don’t have much to say! I had no skin in the game so this was about as dismal of a result as I can remember. They say defence wins championships and the Philadelphia Eagles were fully bought into that maxim. Their quarterback Jalen Hurts was outstanding. Philly’s known for their run game but they sure as hell didn’t rely on it last night.
Speaking of Philly’s run game: Saquon Barkley! The Eagles running back has had a season for the ages. After six years with the New York Giants where he was basically their only good player, he began a new chapter with the Eagles this season. He’s already set numerous franchise records, rushed for over 2,000 yards, and now he’s a Super Bowl champion! See what happens when you bet on yourself?
And then there’s the Kansas City Chiefs, who were trying to become the first team in NFL history to win three Super Bowls in a row, but you couldn’t tell they were playing with that much history on the line. They looked flat, discombobulated, inept. Superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw two interceptions — one returned by Cooper DeJean for a touchdown — and was sacked six times. A very unusual display from a guy in his fifth Super Bowl, but the Chiefs losing wasn’t entirely his fault. All the Chiefs sucked. No one had a good night. Empires sometimes fall.
You can only wonder what happens now to this Chiefs dynasty. How is Mahomes going to respond to this setback next season? And what about legendary tight end (and Taylor’s boyfriend) Travis Kelce—did he just play his final NFL game? Either way, it felt like 99% of Americans were rooting against KC, so I hope you all slept soundly last night.
The halftime show!
I wasn’t the target audience for this show. But you know who was? Aubrey Drake Graham.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, the greatest rapper of his or any generation, coming off of the biggest year any rapper has ever had, and the biggest year any diss track has ever had, could’ve easily played a run-of-the-mill halftime show where he stacked up all his hits like million-dollar bills; what I find so fascinating is that he didn’t really do that. I was surprised at the number of GNX cuts he performed, as good as GNX is. It won’t be the career-defining performance some may have predicted. More of the cherry on top of an illustrious victory lap of a year. You watched him look the camera square in the eye as he called Drake out by name, and yet you didn’t feel bad for Drake at all.
Growing up in Toronto in the mid-to-late 2010s meant Drake was essentially my godfather. And for a long time it felt like his reign atop this city—and the Billboard Hot 100—would never waver. I never loved his poppy stuff but there’s no denying how influential, for instance, a record as good as Take Care became. One the years I’ve forced myself to grow familiar enough with his discography (including one time where I forced myself to listen to all of Scorpion, never doing that again) so that I would be prepared to do things like survive conversations with people about popular music. And write posts like this one.
(You want proof? My three fave Drake songs, in no particular order: “Energy,” “Nice For What,” and “Summer Sixteen”.)
Of course I loved Kendrick too, Always have, always will. But it took a special sort of diss track for Toronto to dethrone its homegrown king as quickly as it did. And “Not Like Us” is that song. How will Drizzy ever recover from hearing that now-immortal “strike a chord” line screamed by crowds at the Grammys and the Super Bowl—IN THE SAME WEEK????
Like, if you’re Patrick Mahomes, you’re not even all that pissed you lost by 22 points last night. Drake had a far, far worse night than you ever could. He’s the Mark Sanchez of rappers now. Wop wop wop wop wop.
your rollout time is insane