Is Super Bowl LVI The Most Likable Super Bowl Ever?

Unless you're actively protesting or boycotting it, safe money is you will be watching the Super Bowl this Sunday, or at the very least attending a Super Bowl party. The NFL's championship game has become an event transcending beyond sports, to the level of a de facto national holiday. But for those who do actually care about the outcome of a game, having a serious rooting interest, whether that be out of positive or negative emotion, has become nearly as time-honored a tradition.

For as long as I can remember (i.e. most of the 21st Century), I've watched the Super Bowl with a healthy amount of emotional investment in the result, despite my beloved Green Bay Packers featuring in the game a grand total of one time in my conscious life. There's a pretty simple reason for that, one that can be described in five words: New England Patriots. Tom Brady. For just about two decades, the Patriots, helmed by likely the greatest quarterback to ever play were the dominant force in the NFL; with six Super Bowl wins and nine appearances in total from 2001-2018, they ruled the league so comprehensively that their era has a legitimate argument for being the league's biggest dynasty in its history. Naturally, this positioned the Pats in either a hero or villain role, depending on whether you were a fan of their team and their quarterback, or if you were one of the many tortured fans of other teams. And when there is a clear hero or villain involved in the highest stakes possible, you're going to be emotionally invested one way or another. I wrote a blog post about this phenomenon all the way back in 2017 inspired by the Patriots' dominance, and that blog stayed relevant for the next few years after that, as well. Even when Tom Brady wished the Patriots farewell, he stayed winning, taking the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Super Bowl glory last year in his first season on a new side. And even in those rare years where the Pats and/or Brady were nowhere to be seen around the Super Bowl, the big game has tended to feature other divisive teams like the Packers or Pittsburgh Steelers, divisive figures like Cam Newton, Ray Lewis or Bill Romanowski, and/or sympathetic storylines like a first Super Bowl ring for Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson, and Patrick Mahomes, all of which posited one of the teams playing as the "bad guys."

This time around, though, there is none of that. At least, no real negative energy on either side. There is plenty of the positive to go around on both sides of the field. In the 13-7, 4th-seeded Cincinnati Bengals, we have the rarity of rarities: a true Cinderella story in the NFL Playoffs. Don't get me wrong, there have been both worse and lower-seeded teams to reach this stage, but other than perhaps the Arizona Cardinals in 2009, I'm not sure there's been a Super Bowl team as unlikely as the Bengals. They were an up-and-down team all season, they're extremely young, their path to this level would take them through some of the best teams in all of football in Tennessee, Kansas City, and Buffalo, and above all else, they held the pressure of a loyal fanbase who hadn't seen their team win a single postseason game in 32 years. And yet, they overcame all of that in incredible fashion, following a game-winning goal-line stand against the Las Vegas Raiders with two thrillers on the road against the Titans and Chiefs, both of which were sealed by rookie kicker Evan McPherson.

Normally, opposite the 'David' would be the 'Goliath,' an easy side to cheer against. But, while it would be inaccurate to consider the Los Angeles Rams a Cinderella story the way the Bengals are, they also are the furthest thing from traditional villains. Like Cincinnati, the Rams feature a young, new-age head coach in search of the validation a first Super Bowl ring would bring, and Sean McVay's team plays an exciting, attractive brand of football. There is an element of the 'superteam' involved with the Rams, as they splurged on several big-name signings over the last couple years, such as Matthew Stafford, Sony Michel, Odell Beckham Jr., Von Miller, Ndamukong Suh, and Jalen Ramsey. But given that this cast of characters, including longtime Ram studs like Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald, are all chasing their first-ever Lombardi Trophy, it's a whole lot easier to cheer for this group than it is to pull for, say, the Brooklyn Nets, or even last year's Buccaneers. Most all of the football world, including even rival fanbases, wants to see Stafford in particular win a Super Bowl after the numbers he put up in his career with the annually disappointing Detroit Lions.

And if the football storylines at play weren't enough, Super Bowl LVI will see Hip-hop take the spotlight at the halftime show for the first time ever. The lineup of tonight's performers is a veritable who's who of Rap and R&B icons: Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar. And each of these artists, with the exception of Eminem, famously represents the West Coast, and Los Angeles in particular. It's not often easy for the rest of the country to root for L.A., but for a city that has a gorgeous new stadium, hasn't hosted a Super Bowl in nearly 30 years, and has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic over the last couple years, it's nice to see them get their moment on this stage as well.

All things considered, I personally am in love with Cincinnati's underdog run and Joe Burrow is quickly becoming my favorite player, so I am fully on board with Bengals Nation tonight. But truth be told, I won't feel any real sadness about the other team winning, am eager to watch the style of both teams' play and the chess match between both coaches, and positively cannot WAIT to see this halftime show. A Super Bowl checking all the above boxes is a completely new frontier for me, and that's a change of which I am happy to sign up for more!