SUSPENSE, POWER, AND SUPER BOWL ‘LIV’

It is a great week to be a Kansas City Chiefs fan. Regardless of whether your team won the game this year, we can all agree that Super Bowl LIV on Sunday was significant for many reasons.  

As for the football itself, this game was too close for comfort. Sports bettors everywhere were probably sweating the entire time. Many 49er fans have expressed their utter disappointment to me this week, and, as an Atlanta Falcons fan, I’m just saying it could have been a lot worse (see: Super Bowl LI). San Francisco fought hard. Both teams were strong this year, but the Chiefs came out on top, beating the 49ers, 31-20.

Patrick Mahomes played a strong game as Quarterback for the Chiefs, but the most impressive part of their game was the teamwork. The team seemed to have a great mindset and never gave up, then won by outscoring the 49ers, 21-0, in the final quarter.  

San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo has taken a lot of criticism following the loss. His team had a clear lead on the Chiefs but seemed to stagnate and get a little too complacent. In the end, those few minutes of being too comfortable probably led to their loss.   

Intense football aside, there was a definite theme in this year’s Super Bowl, and that was empowerment.

Fulfilling a dream that she put into the Twitterverse in 2010, Demi Lovato performed the national anthem before the biggest game of the year.  

Lovato has made quite the comeback in the last month. Following an overdose in 2018, she took some much-needed time to recover her mental health. Just one week earlier, on Jan. 26, she performed at the Grammy Awards, marking her first performance since 2018 and then followed that up in strong fashion with her Super Bowl performance.  

Keeping with the theme of strong women, 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers made history as the first woman to coach in the NFL championship.

 Sowers is no stranger to the game of football. Prior to her internship with the NFL and her position as the offensive assistant coach to the 49’ers, she played in the Women’s Football Alliance for eight years. Her team even went to the Women’s World Championship in 2013.  

Sowers is also the first openly LGBT coach in the NFL, as of 2017, casually making history for the LGBT+ community while pursuing her love of football.

She has publicly shared her experiences in which she faced adversity in the sports industry for her sexual orientation. She has also shared stories from her childhood, during which she already knew she wanted to play football professionally.

Sowers is a person to watch as a role model for upcoming generations.

Adding to the strong female energy in the stadium on Sunday, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez put on an amazing singing/dancing performance at halftime. For some reason, this performance has become something of a controversy online. I thought they did a great job and it takes so much strength to pole dance, so, I can only hope I’m fit enough to do that level of physical activity when I’m 43, like Shakira, or 50, like J-Lo.  

Overall, this Super Bowl was intense, powerful, and one for the books.