“This is very much a political Super Bowl, and it all started with a tweet.”
This is how Professor Kevin Mercuri ‘91, an alum and executive-in-residence at Emerson College, characterized Super Bowl LIX when we sat down to talk about the big game. He teaches classes ranging from crisis communication to sports public relations. His remarks may perfectly encapsulate the essence of why this Super Bowl might feel different to those of us who are usually tuned out.
The tweet, of course, was not a tweet at all—it was a “truth”, which refers to posts made on Truth Social. This one in particular was made by President Donald Trump, which reads “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs. What a GREAT Team, Coach, Quarterback, and virtually everything else, including those fantastic FANS, that voted for me (MAGA!) in record numbers.”
What Trump nailed, according to Mercuri, is an expert display of how to mobilize a base and start a movement. Coined by Saul Alensky in “Rules for Radicals,” this process is known by its shorthand: pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Now, everyone knows Trump is for the Chiefs. To him, the Chiefs are MAGA.
It’s hard to discern whether or not “the Chiefs” are truly MAGA or not. Perhaps this is also exactly why the NFL has been so successful in largely avoiding politicization. “The Chiefs” are a revolving door of players that are completely retired and in turn replaced, and have been for decades. However, there is some merit to what he’s saying; if you want to get specific, yes, the current Chief’s quarterback’s family is “MAGA.” The kicker is MAGA. The owner is MAGA. The geographic area of which they represent is “MAGA,” and has been the last three election cycles.
Coupled with Trump’s notoriously strained relationship with the Eagles due to an invite, and subsequent uninvite to the White House in 2018—he took issue with some of the players kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice—it’s clear Trump has somewhat of a vendetta against the Philly team, which could further explain this peculiar display of who he’s personally rooting for. Irregular for a sitting president to do, but of course, when is Trump ever regular?
Perhaps it could also be because the geographic area of which they represent is not only decidedly not “MAGA,” but also predominantly Black? Or perhaps it’s because their current owner is a Democrat, as well as the fact that their star quarterback, Jalen Hurts, has an all-female management team?
This prompted a series of tweets and TikToks about who to support in the Super Bowl if you don’t care about football—not the Chiefs, of course, because they’re MAGA. While these posts are obviously targeted at people who are fervently anti-MAGA and disengaged from football, it raises many questions about the politicization of the NFL—and whether or not they were ever apolitical.
Kara McCabe, an affiliated faculty member through the Marlboro Institute, has expertise in American pop culture; fitting, because the NFL is pop culture, and pop culture is political—even if we don’t realize it.
McCabe told me about her experience watching the last game of the playoffs, where the Eagles faced off against the Washington Commanders. There was one particular moment where the crowd absolutely erupted in raucous applause, cheering, and probably crying. It wasn’t those opening notes of the national anthem. It wasn’t the American flag stretched across the field, its tri-colored fabrics absolutely swallowing it in size. No, it wasn’t any of those things. It was the release of a live Bald Eagle into the stadium.
“It’s like the most American moment,” McCabe said, remarking on the many symbols of patriotism occurring simultaneously. “We’ve added layers that don’t need to be there.”
Those layers are not just patriotism, but perhaps even nationalism too.
Re-examine that within the context of what happened to Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick was the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who received a mudslide of vitriolic backlash and hatred for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. This isn’t to say there wasn’t support for him too—his jersey became a top seller. But he was still voted the most disliked NFL player.
Or take for example the divide across gender lines when it comes to NFL viewership. Women are categorically left out of NFL fan culture, marketing, branding, participation, and basically every way you can possibly think of. The only exception to this was when (the notably liberal, mind you) Taylor Swift entered the Chief’s scene—not as the pop star extraordinaire we know her to be, but as tight-end Travis Kelce’s WAG—a term meaning “wife and girlfriend,” used to refer to male athlete’s partners.
It is empirically shown that the NFL benefits from Swift’s televised attendance—from a jump in viewership, to booms in merchandising, ticket sales, even commercial space.
So why were men still so mad that she was there? Well, the NFL has not been a historically co-ed space. Not only is her presence drawing more attention than the NFL is able to draw on its own, but those spikes in viewership they saw? Well, they’re from Gen-Z and millennial girls and women. The reason behind this population’s newfound interest in football can only be speculated—but we can probably assume it’s because that woman currently jumping up and down with Brittany Mahomes was also their no. 1 on Spotify Wrapped.
Perhaps the men were mad not because of the newfangled attention, but who exactly that attention was from.
“The NFL always had difficulty breaking into the female demographic,” Mercuri says. “Football is definitely a men’s sport…there really isn’t a female equivalent.”
Emerson College Polling Center released the results from their late January survey, where they asked a sample of the population a variety of questions. Besides the regular questions about presidential approval rating, party affiliation, gender, and other demographic questions, they added a question about which Super Bowl team individuals are rooting for.
Some answers were to be expected—people from the Northeast favor the Eagles, people from the Midwest favor the Chiefs. Other results, however, contradict preconceived notions some have about who likes which teams. For example, Republicans tended to favor the Eagles more, with Democrats showing more preference to the Chiefs. Moreover, people of color favored the Eagles more, whereas white people favored the Chiefs.
The most shocking divide, however, is across gender; women and other underrepresented gender groups, across the board, disproportionately have no preference compared to their male counterparts. 58% of female survey respondents have no preference, compared to 41% of male surveyees.
“You could say that men are becoming more enthusiastic or more entrenched in football culture because studies are showing that they have fewer resources for community elsewhere,” said McCabe. “Men are using football to substitute for something else. And is that a good substitution? Is it a positive thing?”
That is the question that remains to be answered, while the conversation around CTE—chronic traumatic encephalopathy, unhealthy standards of masculinity, and compensation for student athletes reaches a fever pitch.
These issues highlight a dark underbelly to the NFL that many of its fans, nor its ambassadors within the cultural zeitgeist seem willing to address. This makes the theatrical spectacle of the whole affair that is an NFL game leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, doesn’t it?
Further yet, there is an argument to be made that this very grandiose is in and of itself political.
“We make these athletes into celebrities, we pay them like they’re uber celebrities, and for better or worse shows what we value as a nation,” said McCabe. “When you pay your athletes millions of dollars and your teachers can’t afford to live in the districts where they teach? We’ve just shown our hand as a country.”
There is something ominously Hunger Games-esque about two A-list celebrities, hand-in-hand, donned in Louis Vuitton on the way to a game where one of them will throw his body around for a silver trophy of a football, all while healthcare premiums go up, half the country loses their bodily autonomy, and others get thrown out despite being law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. On the other hand, we still deserve to have something that brings us joy. Even if what we’re trying to use as a distraction from politics may itself be inherently political.
Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter. When you take away arbitrary party lines and labels, what remains is an institution that is still inherently political.
So, at the end of the day, do people pay more allegiance to their NFL team, or their political party affiliation?
McCabe says, “In this 2025 moment, I think it might be neck and neck…[but] it might lean more toward politics.”
Others, like Mercuri, felt differently.
“They are going to pick their team affiliation [over political party affiliations]. The teams themselves try to stay apolitical,” he said. “I think most fans will look past politics this Sunday and still cheer for their preferred team.”
In political times as emotionally volatile and polarized as this one, it’s hard not to get burnt out by the constant doomerism. It’ll be nice for us to all turn our brains off this Sunday and watch some dudes duke it out and fight over who gets to hold the pigskin ball. That is, after all, what the Super Bowl is all about—it’s a face-off of the very guys who are the best at doing just that.
However, nothing is really as it seems, especially with Trump in charge. As such, let this column serve as a formal invitation, from me to you, to think critically about the media you consume—from art, to performance, to the very crux of those things at the pinnacle of pop culture: football.
