Super Bowl LX received more attention for the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area hosting the game then the actual game did itself.
On the field, the Super Bowl was a bit of a dud. The Seattle Seahawks manhandled the outmatched New England Patriots and waltzed to an easy victory. Most of the headlines around the game featured around Bad Bunny’s halftime show and the city of San Francisco as a host.
The halftime show from Bad Bunny was widely appreciated by the millions and millions who watched it and didn’t sequester themselves away from the rest of the world in their safe space with Kid Rock’s lip synching.
As for the city of San Francisco? That is still a subject of debate.
Pat McAfee was among those skeptics that had heard all the chatter about what a disaster the city was, but came out of it singing the praises of the Bay Area. Some of the lcoal Boston hosts who made the trip called it a “zombie apocalypse.”
As for Michael Irvin, you can definitely put him in the latter category.
The Hall of Famer’s Super Bowl rant happened last week on his YouTube channel but began to spread like wildfire on social media this week.
“This was a horrible Super Bowl,” Irvin said. “They should never ever, ever, ever bring the Super Bowl back to San Francisco. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The city, in all the years of going to a Super Bowl, this was the worst. This seems so, like, blah. It was blah in the city. You know what I mean? It just wasn’t jumping like you see a Super Bowl jumping. The people, blah. The buildings out here looks blah. When you go into an event it was like blah. I’m thinking there should be so much money out here because the tech is out here, right? But it all looked so blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I don’t want to dampen anybody’s thoughts about a Super Bowl during a Super Bowl, so I said I was going to wait. But, I couldn’t wait until this moment came to tell you. Damn! I believe this is the worst Super Bowl I have ever gone to. I’m talking about just seeing it and how the city rocks and everything. And then the game started and it followed suit.”
Irvin pleaded with the residents of San Francisco, asking that they wouldn’t hate him for his take, before he decided to go in on the city even more and saying that the NFL should never hold another Super Bowl in the Bay Area again. At least he said he enjoyed his visits there when he played in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys. But as a Super Bowl host? Not so much.
“You cannot bring that Super Bowl back here anymore. Nah. That’s just my thoughts. Literally, you could not go anywhere on the streets. It took forever to get right down the street because traffic was so bad and what they had dropped off. You literally could not get anywhere. God bless ’em. God bless ’em. But whoever put this whole system together and blocked off the streets, it was the worst. It was the worst. NFL, you cannot come back here again. You cannot have a Super Bowl back here again. NFC Championship game, if they earned it, okay.”
While there was plenty of differing opinions about the city as host, it probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the actual Super Bowl stadium was in Santa Clara, which is 43 miles away from where the media was stationed at Radio Row in San Francisco. The Super Bowl’s Opening Night was the opposite direction at the San Jose Convention Center. Logistically, it must have been a nightmare to get around.
Los Angeles and Atlanta will host the next two Super Bowls and right now San Francisco isn’t in the rotation. And judging by the polarizing reaction to Super Bowl LX and the new stadiums being built around the NFL, it may be a while before we see it back in the Bay Area again.
About Matt Yoder