Chiefs, Eagles, Panthers: Thoughts on Super Bowl LIX

Photo Collage by Simrah Ahmad, Staff Photographer

Just before the start of the Super Bowl, junior film production major Lauren Trippeer was met with a shock. 

She and her roommates were preparing for their house’s Super Bowl party, an event hosting 30 people. A “Chiefs fan by force” because of her mom, Trippeer had decorated her party’s invitation with a message cheering on the Kansas City Chiefs, the twice-in-a-row Super Bowl champions about to take on the Philadelphia Eagles for the trophy. 

Expecting her whole house to be Chiefs supporters, Trippeer was surprised to find all of her roommates dressed in green for the Big Game. Once her party was in full swing, she found herself to be one of only two Chiefs fans in the entire assortment. Her team’s 22-40 loss didn’t make for a fun viewing experience, either. 

“They just kept throwing interception after interception after interception,” Trippeer told The Panther. “They were playing remarkably poorly. I feel like I haven’t seen a Super Bowl in a long time where a team plays that poorly.” 

The results of the Super Bowl — and the poor performance of the Chiefs — wasn’t the only talking point that The Panther discussed with the Chapman community. After Super Bowl Sunday, The Panther sat down with students and faculty about the Big Game, the halftime show and all of the commercials that ran in-between.

The Big Game

To Trippeer, the Chiefs’ loss was their own fault. 

“I feel that they lost not because the other team was necessarily better, but because of how many errors they made,” she said. “I’m not a Patriots fan, but Tom Brady in his time, he was unstoppable. The other team wasn’t losing because of error, they were losing because Tom Brady and the Patriots were so good. This game, I felt like they lost because of errors, not because the Eagles were just a better team.” 

For senior integrated educational studies major Bailey Abarca, however, the sentiment was different: she was happy at the Eagles taking the trophy. 

“I was just tired of (the Chiefs) winning,” Abarca told The Panther. “I also didn’t want them to be the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row. I wanted something else.” 

The Advertising

A discussion of the Super Bowl isn’t possible without talking about what runs on your screen while the teams are preparing for the next play. This year, the assortment of Super Bowl advertisements included an alien and a human fighting over a bag of Doritos, Harrison Ford driving a Jeep and actors Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal recreating an iconic scene from their 1989 romantic-comedy “When Harry Met Sally…” with Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise, among many others. 

To discuss advertising, The Panther sat down with public relations, advertising and entertainment marketing artistic assistant professor Eva Finn. Finn discussed the Super Bowl advertisements in both her “Copywriting” and “Principles of Advertising” classes. 

“(The Harrison Ford Jeep spot) was actually one of the winners for a lot of the students…,” Finn told The Panther. “Because they felt like it was at least kind of funny, it was genuine. I would say another spot that probably was a winner in the ad community… was the Coors Light spot, the case of the Mondays, with the sloths.” 

Overall, though, her and her students’ assessment wasn’t really positive. Despite liking a few other spots, like those for InstaCart, Michelob Ultra and Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, her students made points that the ads were lacking creativity and storytelling — and she even questioned if artificial intelligence (AI) was used at the ideation stage. 

“I’ve been in the business for a really long time, and (these were) the most disappointing Super Bowl ad commercials that I’ve ever witnessed,” she told The Panther. 

In fact, Finn didn’t think one commercial hit every “mark” of a good advertisement. To her, the “marks” of a good advertisement aren’t even that secret. According to Finn, all good ads should know their audience, tell a story and be memorable — three things none of the spots fully landed. 

“To me, a great ad is one where I say, being in the business, ‘Dang, I wish I thought of that,” she said. “And there wasn’t a single one of those ads where I was saying to myself, ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’”

The Halftime Performance

At halftime, Kendrick Lamar took the stage, accompanied by SZA, Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams and Mustard. While Trippeer found some moments she enjoyed in the halftime show, she didn’t like it. To her, many of its elements didn’t live up to halftime shows past.

“I think that the halftime shows have declined in the past years,” Trippeer said. “When I think about Lady Gaga flying in to the Super Bowl, or Katy Perry riding in on a tiger, the production value of those shows were I think a lot higher… but when you look at some of the other halftime shows of costume changes and multiple additional artists coming in and joining and these big sets and stages that change and things, this one was lacking that. I thought that it was just a little bit bland in the choreography and in the sets and in the fashion of it all.” 

Abarca, conversely, enjoyed the show, citing her enjoyment of Lamar’s outfit and SZA. 

“I’m a big SZA fan,” she said. “I don’t know too (many) of Kendrick Lamar’s songs, but there were a few that I knew, and overall I thought it was good.” 

Unless the Dallas Cowboys are playing, Abarca prefers to hang out with friends and family and enjoy the community of the event, rather than be glued to the football game. 

“I would say I would probably make it a day and I would go to a Super Bowl party, just because everybody’s there and it’s the one time we’re all together watching something. Plus, it’s also entertaining with the halftime show,” she told The Panther. “I think that’s always one thing that everybody goes to go watch for, whether you know the teams or you don’t know the teams, or you like football or don’t like football.” 

Trippeer had a similar sentiment. 

“I think it’s very fun to make things into an event. I think that’s part of the joy of living, is getting to celebrate silly things,” she told The Panther. “Any excuse to have a good time with people you love is, I think, the whole joy of living.”

For more thoughts on the Super Bowl and Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance, read an editorial in our Sports section and an opinion piece breaking down the show.