Super Bowl media night: When football meets circus
On Super Bowl LI media night, there were two teams, thousands of fans and a mix of media members and circus acts all on a baseball infield.
If a time machine existed, it would be one hell of an experiment taking sports reporters from the 1960s and transporting them into Monday night’s Super Bowl media frenzy at Minute Maid Park in Houston.
The evening ranged from fans who doubled as paying customers for a press conference, to media members on a spectrum from legitimate to the height of absurdity. In some cases, fans paid $30 to gain access to the ballpark, which entitled them to hearing answers from their favorite players through a tiny headset. In 1967, for Super Bowl I, the most expensive ticket for the game was $12. Monday’s audience also got a intermission concert from X-Ambassadors and a fireworks show following the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots finishing up their respective hour-long media sessions.
Imagine the look on the faces of Frank Deford or George Plimpton, when their interview gets interrupted by a man brandishing a chicken leg in one hand and a soccer ball in the other, asking Falcons center Alex Mack for an autograph. Those images might be worth the investing ample capital into time travel.
This is not to say Media Night doesn’t serve a real purpose. Super Bowl week is much more than football these days. It’s an entertainment spectacle that happens to finish with 60 minutes of sport. In this vein, there needs to be equal parts pageantry and reporting, sanity and zaniness.
One could turn around and see someone walking around in a suit or stunning dress. Then, they could turn once more and see a reporter wearing a garbage can as an outfit, showing his displeasure with Texans quarterback Brock Osweiler. Why? Who could know?
For some, folks like the aforementioned can be tiresome. It’s increasingly hard to get a few questions out with a stream of consciousness when a sideshow goes parading by, or worse, into your interview. On the other side of the proverbial aisle are those who find the whole thing humorous, a good laugh after a long season of covering games and stories made out to be far more serious than they really are.
The NFL credentialed approximately 5,000 media members for Monday, showcasing how much attention the sport commands. For all of its faults — handling of concussions, Thursday Night Football, inconsistent punishments and more — the league understands how to marry entertainment and sports. If nothing else, Media Night was certainly an example of that.
Houston has welcomed the Super Bowl, and the circus, into town. In 2017, you can’t have the former without the latter.