Confession time: I had never watched a Super Bowl before tonight. Not even for the commercials or the half-time show. Occasionally I would see a commercial on YouTube at some point after, but I have never once felt the desire to sit down and watch a sport I did not understand, cheering for teams I did not care about.
Today, for the Super Bowl LI: Patriots vs. Falcons, I sat down and watched with Google open to look up names and other announcements I had no clue about.
The way I see it, people watch the Super Bowl for three reasons: the game, the commercials and the half-time show. I was pretty much unimpressed by all three.
The game
Even I, a person with little-to-no football knowledge, was pretty excited for the end of this game. It was pretty intense. I had just about checked out of the Super Bowl for the night, and then the Patriots made an incredible comeback.
The Falcons started off incredibly strong, and then the Patriots came out of nowhere. I’m still shocked they won, which makes Brady a pretty big deal now with the most Super Bowl wins. History was made tonight with the first-ever overtime game, according to the New York Times. It is kind of exciting to know the first Super Bowl I watched was such a big deal.
The commercials
I thought Super Bowl commercials were supposed to be big and weird. I’m just wondering who spent millions of dollars for such mediocre commercials. According to the New York Times article, “Super Bowl commercials: immigration and diversity show up in some ads,” the average 30-second ad costs around $5 million dollars. For that kind of money, it is perfectly acceptable to go a little crazy with the ad.
You just cannot escape politics these days. Some of these commercials were beautifully done and clearly a lot of thought went into their political messages. Diversity and immigration, as the New York Times article’s headline would suggest, were big topics. Audi made a statement about the gender wage gap and Coca-Cola’s “America the Beautiful” sung by different voices in different languages were clearly making statements.
I would not say this is necessarily a bad thing. I simply did not really watch the Super Bowl for more political statements, but I’m not the one spending that much money for half a minute. I would have loved to see more fun, goofy ads, but practically everyone is talking about these issues. If advertisers want people to pay attention to their commercials, then they made the right move doing what they did.
The halftime show
Lady Gaga stuck with what she knew when it came to songs for this halftime. I was actually pretty disappointed she did not want to try to show off anything new or at least newer. “Bad Romance” and “Born This Way” have been heard so many times, the songs did not really do anything for me.
That being said, nice pyrotechnics. They had to open the roof of the NRG Stadium for this show, which is pretty impressive. Too bad Lady Gaga herself was not as impressive. She was really tame considering her reputation. It’s the Super Bowl; go big or go home.
The verdict
Up until the last few minutes before overtime, I was bored with every part of the Super Bowl. The halftime show and commercials were underwhelming, and nothing was happening in the game until the very end. I’ll admit, even when I did not care who won, the ending was really exciting and dramatic.
Kelsey Kendall is a junior in journalism and anthropology. The views and opinions expressed in this review are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Collegian. Please send comments to opinion@kstatecollegian.com.
