Post Super Bowl depression

Courtesy of FOX.

The Baltimore-Washington Parkway is a road, a highway, mostly known for its inconvenience when traveling from the nation’s capital to Charm City. A highway that’s illustrious for its parking lot traffic, yet it was clear on my way to Columbia, Maryland. I was on my way to a Super Bowl Party, a party I had agreed to go to before Trump officially took on his second term.

Until that drive, January 20th through February 8th had been nothing but chaos and destruction of our federal government as we knew it. To say I wasn’t doing well understates the complexity of emotion that comes with seeing something you have grown to respect crumble before your eyes. However, on my lonely drive to the party, I was feeling particularly wistful. I haven’t seen my friends in a while, I’d get to watch some football, and there’s nothing like some Super Bowl snacks - it wasn’t all bad.

The Super Bowl is that one time a year when over 127.7 million people glue their eyes to the TV to watch grown men beat the shit out of each other. It’s colored with celebrity appearances, cursed commercials, and a halftime show that people will milk for the next three months on their podcasts. Despite all of that, it’s one of those things America can look forward to all year. It’s a reason for all of us to get together, and in a time like right now, we need that.

This year’s big game had clearly defined good and bad guys. The Kansas City Chiefs, a dynasty of the modern-day NFL, were coming in hot against the city of “No one likes us”: the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs found themselves at the forefront of NFL snark, getting by winning one-score games week after week, getting “preferential treatment” from the referees, and sexist fans failing to understand why Taylor Swift attending games is good for the sport. This doesn’t even scrape the surface of the Republican tendencies the organization has.

From Chief’s kicker, Harrison Butker, making comments in May 2024 saying women should become homemakers after graduating (just the tip of the iceberg to his sexist barrage), to Travis Kelce saying “It’s a great honor” to have Trump attend the game (despite the president harassing his partner online), to Jackson Mahomes, brother of Patrick Mahomes, taking a picture with the president and posting it online, it’s clear to see why the Chiefs had positioned themselves as the villains of the league and the game.

Despite being a Washington Commanders fan, it’s not surprising that I found myself rooting for the Eagles. Philadelphia is a brash city when it comes to its sports. The city loves to make so much noise that its stadiums shake during playoff games, and its fans will climb light poles when that noise pays off. For these reasons, the general sports world doesn't take too fondly to the Eagles or their fans, but this time was different. Saquon Barkley, star running back and one of the most likable players in the league, was coming off an MVP campaign, and the Eagles were in a real spot to conquer evil. But their positioning wasn’t the reason that they became the heroes of the game.

In 2018, the Super Bowl-winning Eagles were turned away from a ceremonial White House visit while Trump was in office due to a surplus of factors, but a main one being players simply didn’t want to attend a ceremony hosted by a Trump White House. Trump, exhibiting a tantrum, decided to cancel the ceremony altogether - which only indicated that the players had a voice to use and the power to communicate a message without even having to say a word.

The battle was set: the Chiefs versus the Eagles. Evil versus good. Yet it wasn’t the only display of good versus evil taking place on Sunday night. Kendrick Lamar, coming off of the greatest year of his career and the most emphatic put-down in a rap beef we have seen in history (we don’t need to get into the details, you know the story), was set to take the stage at the halftime show. Before taking the stage, he made history, becoming the first solo hip-hop artist to perform at the halftime show. As the beef stood, K-Dot won, and it wasn’t close. Making a No. 1 hit song out of it, “Not Like Us,” to getting an arena to shout “A-minnooorrrr,” the big question heading into the show was if he was going to sing a song about calling a behemoth in the music industry a pedophile. And he did it-he fucking did it.

As “Not Like Us” finally played through the Superdome, Kendrick took every advantage of the moment. Looking right at the camera when he said “Say Drake,” the intention was clear, and that was before he got 60,000 people in the New Orleans Superdome to sing “A-minnooorrrr” while every Trump-voting grandpa was forced to sit there and watch a cultural moment that their incompetence couldn’t conceive the importance of.

The conclusion to the beef wasn’t the best part of the show. Samuel L. Jackson performing as “Uncle Sam,” actively working to censor Lamar throughout the whole performance, set the tone for the show. The choreography had its own effect as well-Black men formed and danced to the shape of the American flag, Serena Williams Danced without fanfare, and every step (literally) throughout the show delivered both entertainment and commentary. The show was closed out with Kendrick bringing out his producer and assumed friend, DJ Mustard, to bounce around with a football in his hand to his produced hit “TV Off.” Lamar did the thing.

Culture won the night of the Super Bowl. We got to see one of the most influential artists on the biggest stage of his life performing with conviction and joy, all while dancing on the grave of a man who's still alive. We also got to see the Eagles win with ease. The Chiefs had no answers for a team who just wanted it more, for a team who represented more than just Philadelphia. Despite the dismantling of democracy happening behind our back shoulders since January 20th, we all had a moment to cherish that good won. Good came out on top, and we all got to see that together. I’m glad that we got that too-we as people needed that. We needed a reason to see our friends and our family. To eat food that’ll rip open our stomachs the next day, to comfort each other with smiles, hugs, and conversations that might make you scratch your head the next day. We needed that.

There is something nostalgic about being at a Super Bowl party; the same thing happens every year, so you know what to expect. You would think with this being Trump’s second term, you would also know what to expect as well, but you don’t. As the Eagles were blowing out the Chiefs, reality started to sink in. I was going to go home, scroll through Bluesky, and relive the hellscape I missed while I was at the party. None of this was aided by the fact that people were leaving early because it was a blowout. I didn’t even get the chance to escape from the shit show for an extra 15 minutes that I thought I was going to have! So, I got in the car, put on a history podcast, and found myself sulking-sinking into a depression that I saw coming, but was too damn tired to avoid. I mean, we got everything we wanted, right? Friends, an Eagles win, a Kendrick smile, and the food. Anything else and I would be greedy!

As much as I want to escape from this world, from this political reality, there’s simply no choice. Fundamentally, you have to face this head-on. You can not ignore the issues that are in your face. Friends have already been getting laid off, work is unbalanced because anything can change at a knife's edge, all while I have family cheering this on! So no, it can’t be ignored.

While I don’t have the answers or the solutions, and I don’t expect you to have them as well, there are things we can do to make this better for ourselves. Just like in the Super Bowl, let’s take our wins, let’s celebrate the Eagles and K-Dot, but most importantly, let’s find our community. You can’t change the culture, society, or the political landscape alone-nor should you go through current events alone. Even with the depressing ride home from Columbia, Maryland, I know I have people I can count on, and you do too.