Many NFL fans were dreading this Super Bowl because of the team matchup and the poor production of the “Big Game” in recent years. NFL fans have become tired of watching the Chiefs in the Super Bowl every year. They have also become tired of the game being based around a halftime concert and overhyped commercials.
FOX hosted the Super Bowl this year and did a solid job with it. Considering it was a low-anticipated matchup that turned out to be a lopsided game, it was still entertaining to watch. FOX cannot control the play on the field or the fact that it was over at halftime when it was 24-0 Eagles. What they can control is how much the production focuses on the game. They can control the commercials played, the halftime show, the commentators and the graphics displayed on the screen.
Starting with the worst of the worst in this production — the new score bug. The way the score and stats were displayed at the bottom of the screen was different than how they were displayed in the regular season on FOX. In the regular season, the scoreboard looked clean and professional. In the Super Bowl, it looked like it was designed by a kid for a middle school art project.
The production team took the risk of putting a transparent background behind the scores, and it did not pay off. While the score was still easy to see, it looked like there were numbers floating on the screen. The team labels were rectangles with each team’s color, respectively. Inside those rectangles was each team’s abbreviation (“KC” and “PHI”). The text for those abbreviations, the score and the stats looked like the same font I am currently using to write this review. Boring.
To sum it up, the new score bug’s feature was a miss. It looks like it was made on an Excel spreadsheet. This is something they should have tested in the regular season, and something I hope I never have to see again.
My other major critique of the production was Tom Brady. Anyone who watched the Super Bowl knows that nothing more needs to be said. For those who did not watch, Tom Brady (cue sarcasm) is the best thing to happen on earth since the wheel was invented. Oh, and he commentates too. Brady performed as the color commentator for this broadcast to conclude his first season in the booth. He was just as bad as he was the rest of the season. Why did FOX trade away two all-stars in Tory Aikman and Joe Buck to try out a rookie? That I will never know. An even bigger question, why was this rookie calling the biggest game of the year?
Did you know Brady won seven Super Bowls? Listen to him for one quarter, and you will hear about it so many times that you will never forget it. I did not see any good moments from him in this game. Even when he is not talking about himself, he still is not good. He is very knowledgeable about the game, obviously, but he trips over his own words, and half the time, his audience has no idea what he is trying to say because he either does not dumb it down or he rambles about a whole lot of nothing.
What separated this production from recent Super Bowls was the focus on the game. It was a pleasant surprise to not have to see Taylor Swift constantly throughout the broadcast. Impacted by her washed up boyfriend, Travis Kelce, having a mediocre game, Swift only received seven seconds of screen time on the national broadcast.
I also appreciate FOX having a “get-in, get-out” attitude when it came to the halftime show. The constant hip-hop performances are getting old. The NFL selects the artists and the show, but FOX has the decision on how they present it nationally. It is expected that they are going to show the performance, but they still had a halftime show. When fans watch a regular season game, they hate halftime because it is boring. They would rather be watching the game. However, they continue to watch because they want expert analysis and a recap of the half. This often gets skipped over because of the music performance, but FOX did a good job incorporating their experts at halftime to help keep the focus on the game.
Overall, I would give the production a 7.5/10 rating. Despite being a horrendous football game, this was the first time in a while that the Super Bowl felt like a game and not a performance with some football being played in between. My only two critiques would be to terminate Tom Brady’s contract immediately and keep it simple with the score bugs.
