Missed the Super Bowl Opening Night? Dave Barry has you covered with his observations.
Along with approximately 275,000 other media people — some of whom, frankly, could stand to use more deodorant — I attended Super Bowl LIV Opening Night sponsored by Bolt24. This was the first opportunity for the media here to talk to the players preparing for pro football’s biggest game, so naturally the No. 1 question on everyone’s mind was: What the hell is “Bolt24?”
Turns out it’s a new “hydration product” made by Gatorade. Hydration, as we all know, is vital. You should be hydrating between sentences as you read this. In the old days, people hydrated by drinking ordinary water. Ha ha! What a bunch of morons. But then Gatorade scientists discovered that if they took water and added “electrolytes” and “antioxidants” — both of which have been proven, in laboratory tests, to be big words — they could charge a LOT more money for it.
Anyway, Super Bowl LIV Opening Night (sponsored by Bolt24) took place Monday at Marlins Park, home of the Miami Marlins, a local baseball team. As people arrived at the park they were greeted by an army of cheerful, friendly Super Bowl volunteers, eager to personify the Super Bowl Host Committee’s official theme: “Welcome to Miami, a Somewhat Safe City, in Certain Areas!” Inside there was a nice food spread for the media, including, I am pleased to report, croquetas. I wanted to leave some for the out-of-towners, so I only ate about 40.
The main event of Opening Night was the interaction between the media and the Super Bowl teams. This is a Super Bowl tradition that everybody loves to hate; it’s basically a soccer riot with microphones. The players, especially the more famous ones, are swarmed upon by sweating hordes of media people shoving each other out of the way and shouting questions. Many of the questions are remarkably stupid (“Do you put ketchup on your hot dogs?”) because the National Football League apparently will grant a media credential to any random idiot. For example, I have one.
Anyway here is what I learned about Super Bowl LIV during the three hours I spent inside the shouting, shoving, b.o.-fume-emitting media horde:
THE TEAMS
There will be two teams in the game, the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. The Miami Dolphins will not be participating this year, but they went undefeated in, like, 1923, so shut up, haters.
THE MASCOTS
The Chiefs’ mascot is allegedly a wolf, but it looks more like a giant mouse. The 49ers’ mascot, at least the one who showed up at Opening Night, looks like a lumberjack on acid.
TEAM ANAGRAMS
The letters in “Kansas City Chiefs” can be rearranged to spell “Fanatics? Hicks? Yes!” The letters in “San Francisco Forty Niners” can be rearranged to spell “Sniff Rare Narcotics, Sonny.”
THE PLAYERS
Both teams have numerous players whom I would describe, using my journalism observational skills, as “large.” If you, a normal human, were to bump into any one of these players, you would bounce off like a ping-pong ball striking a Cadillac Escalade.
Of course, the most important players are the quarterbacks because without them there would be nobody to start the play by yelling “hut,” and the other players would have to spend the entire game squatting in an uncomfortable stance.
The Chiefs quarterback is a polite young man named Patrick Mahomes, who revealed, under questioning from the media (really) that he got a haircut last Friday and plans to get another one this Friday. He also said “I usually eat eggs in the morning.” And he revealed that he does, in fact, put ketchup on his hot dogs. “One hundred percent I do put ketchup on my hot dogs” were his exact words.
The 49ers quarterback is Jimmy Garoppolo, who is irritatingly good-looking. He makes George Clooney look like Jabba the Hutt. I stood in his media clot with an old friend of mine who is (a) an excellent sportswriter and (b) a woman, and she felt the need to make the following completely unnecessary observation to me THREE TIMES: “He’s very handsome.” A little while later I was exchanging texts with another friend, and I mentioned that I was standing in front of Jimmy Garoppolo, and my friend texted back that his wife wanted “a photo and some alone time.” She’s a big sports fan.
So those are your matchups. It’s expected to be a close game, with the winner, in all likelihood, being whichever team scores the most total points. But no matter who prevails, in the end the real winners will be you, the people of South Florida, for being such gracious hosts for Super Bowl LIV, even though you can’t attend the game personally because tickets cost like a trillion dollars. You’re doing a great job, and you should give yourself a pat on the back. And then you should hydrate.
EARTHQUAKE UPDATE
There is no reason to be concerned about the earthquake. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement reassuring the South Florida community that “all Super Bowl activities will go on as scheduled, except for the actual game, which will now take place in Phoenix.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 9:55 AM.