The best and worst moments of the Super Bowl

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photo by Henry Hays

A Sunday filled with junk food, dips and superstitious fans, the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 31 – 20 in Super Bowl LIV last weekend. Although the game is always the main event, I wanted to highlight my favorite moments and some bad ones I wish to forget.

  • Top Three Moments
    • Baby Nut: In January, Planters announced it would be killing off its famous Mr. Peanut mascot. Many mourned his death by creating memes, wishing for his reincarnation and hoping he would not be gone for good. Planters answered some of these prayers with its Baby Nut commercial where Mr. Peanut was reborn as a cute, baby version of himself that could compete with Baby Groot and Baby Yoda for cutest animated child. The memes made from this ad will only add to the greatness of the commercial.
    • Andy Reid’s long-awaited Super Bowl win: Andy Reid is a Hall of Fame coach for sure, but this Super Bowl victory cements his legacy as one of the greatest coaches of this era. For a long time, 21 years to be exact, Reid had a flaw on his record. He last saw a Super Bowl in 2005 when he coached the Philadelphia Eagles in a loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX. After this year’s win, he will no longer be remembered as one of the greatest coaches to never win a Super Bowl.
    • Nothing like last year: Everyone remembers last year’s snoozefest of a game between the Patriots and Rams. Only those who love watching defense could have found that game mildly interesting with the Patriots winning after a whopping final score of 13-3. Fortunately, this year we were blessed with an entertaining game — something that everyone wishes for on a Super Bowl Sunday. It had everything you could want in a Super Bowl: good defensive plays, quality offense throughout the game, a comeback and plenty of storylines to spice it up. With the game being the focal point of the night, I’m glad it was an entertaining one.
  • Worst three moments
    • Worst commercial: After carefully viewing the many commercials that aired on Sunday evening, I have come to the decision that the Pop Tart Pretzel ad was the worst. Not only is the commercial a diversion from Pop Tart’s classic animated ads, but the commercial is confusing and promotes an alternative to “boring” pretzels. Although I can agree pretzels can be a bit bland at times, a Pop Tart version is not the solution I, and many others, were looking for. This ad combined a bad product with a lackluster commercial that culminated in a poor performance.
    • One expensive nap time: In just the first quarter of the game, a man went viral for falling asleep in his seat. Although the game wasn’t the most exciting to start, I wouldn’t call it a snooze fest. Apparently this guy felt differently. A photo of him soon began to circulate the internet, and he woke up to find his face all over Twitter — a fact he was not too happy about. When asked for an interview by a journalist he replied, “absolutely not.” I think this is a time he hopes the world will soon forget.
    • Another lead lost: This is a good or bad moment depending on which team you were rooting for. But for 49er fans and head coach Kyle Shanahan in particular, this is the worst moment of the night. Shanahan is forever associated with the Falcon’s 28-3 lead blown by the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. He was their offensive coordinator at the time, and it seems his knack for blowing leads in the Super Bowl is not gone. After being up 20-10 in the fourth quarter, Shanahan and the 49ers saw the Chiefs score 21 unanswered points to win the game. Although not nearly as catastrophic as in Super Bowl LI, this failure to close out the game will be remembered by fans on both sides for years to come and will continue to taint Shanahan’s record as a coach.