Transcript: Culture Chat — What makes the Super Bowl so super?

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture Chat — What makes the Super Bowl so super?’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show. Sunday is the Super Bowl. It is America’s most watched thing on TV. Period. By far. It gets over 100mn American views and more than another 50mn from around the world. And today, we decided to take it on as a cultural event to discuss. If you don’t follow American football, then don’t be alarmed. I barely follow American football, but we’ve basically set this up so you can go into this Sunday’s game ready to take it in. We’ll tell you a little bit about football, but we’ll also have you ready for the team drama, the snacks and the halftime show. This year, the big game is between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. And the halftime performer is Usher. And let’s get into it. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and I’m a Hail Mary on the last play. 

Sara Germano
I think you are, Lilah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you. Joining me in New York is Sara Germano, the FT’s US sports business correspondent. And our number one draft pick. 

Sara Germano
Thank you. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Nice to have you here. Also with us in the studio is Janet Jackson’s two-second delay (laughter) — our Wall Street editor, Sujeet Indap. Welcome, Sujeet. 

Sujeet Indap
Great to be here. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Great to have you. I’m so excited you both are here. And before we get into it, I wanted to ask both of you just to put forward a case for the Super Bowl. For listeners who don’t care about sports or who are coming into this from Europe and don’t normally watch American football, what would they get out of watching this game? Sarah? 

Sara Germano
I would say that viewing the Super Bowl is an opportunity to see the most distilled, purest, comprehensive understanding of American culture. Everything from sport to commerce to entertainment to patriotism, it is the one thing in these divided times that unites this country the most. And if you wanted to understand the United States, you probably couldn’t do better than watching four hours of the Super Bowl.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it’s the one sports game I watch.

Sara Germano
That’s true for a lot of people. Like, you don’t actually need to know much about the sport itself to enjoy the Super Bowl. I would say most of those, you know, 112mn people who are watching don’t know the finer points of a touchback or, you know, a safety or any of the other football rules. 

Sujeet Indap
And just along those lines, my mother, who is an immigrant to this country, has been going to and is going to this weekend a Super Bowl party, which, she has been in the same one she’s been going to for 40 years. She was sending me photos of the food she’s taking. And they’ll be, you know, 50 to 100 Indian-American immigrants in this one house, watching a sport which they otherwise, you know, wouldn’t necessarily follow that closely. But it is for them a time for gathering and . . .  

Lilah Raptopoulos
And eating seven-layer dip . . . and drinking beers. 

Sara Germano
Seven-layer dip . . . Beer, wine. You can make anything that you want, like nachos, candy, wings, wings or a big one. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
What a dream.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, so let’s talk about this year’s game. Can you both set the scene? Who are the teams this year? Why do they matter? How do people feel about these two teams playing each other? Are they disappointed or are they excited? Yeah. 

Sara Germano
I guess we’ll start with the San Francisco 49ers. And we’re gonna get into this. But they are the non-Taylor Swift team. There’s a Taylor Swift team and there’s a non-Taylor Swift team. The San Francisco 49ers are a historic franchise. They are one of the pillars of like NFL culture going back decades. They had a dynastic team in the 1980s led by Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. They won four Super Bowls. Like, they were it. They were the man. Their last Super Bowl came in 1994. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. You mean the last Super Bowl win. So it’s been a while. 

Sara Germano
It’s been a while. And in fact this year’s game is a rematch of the Super Bowl in 2020. So these two teams faced each other not long ago. And the Chiefs won. Which adds another element of drama. The 49ers are led by another very young, very talented quarterback in Brock Purdy. And this is sort of a redemption arc for them coming back to the Super Bowl trying to re-establish the 49ers as a legacy powerhouse type team. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Cool. All right. Great. And what about the Chiefs? 

Sujeet Indap
Yeah. So, the Chiefs are famous this year for obviously this Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce storyline. But if we rewind three months before that, the most famous Chief by far was their hot, young quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who’s now been in the league for six or seven years. And every year he’s been the starter for the team, the main quarterback. They’ve at least reached the conference championship game. And, now this is his chance to win a third Super Bowl. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Handsome man. (Laughter) Is that right? Is that right? 

Sujeet Indap
He’s actually, he’s quite charismatic. He’s on TV all the time doing ads for insurance. And he’s, like, quite funny and charming. And glib. So he’s great. He’s a great kind of a front for the NFL. There is a view out there that he is soon to be considered the so-called GOAT player, the greatest of all time, even though he’s not even 30 yet, although, in fact, his greatness will exceed the incumbent Tom Brady’s soon. So this, there is a lot on the line in this game for him personally. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. So I’ve heard from some football people in my life (laughter) that, like, people are kind of like, not that excited about this game because the Chiefs have been winning a lot and San Francisco like, they’ve been good. I don’t know that it’s, like, not as exciting a game as it could have been. 

Sara Germano
I think some of that has to do with who they beat to get to the Super Bowl. And in the 49ers case, they beat the Detroit Lions. There was a huge sort of undercurrent, underdog support for the Lions. They’ve never been in a Super Bowl.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Detroit’s a city that, sort of, America wants to win in some ways.

Sara Germano
Completely. They’re like, they’re emblematic of the resurgence of Detroit after their bankruptcy 10 years ago. They have this really charismatic, kind of aggressive coach. So there was a lot of like, grassroots support for Detroit. So I think some of the dissatisfaction you’re speaking to is not so much dissatisfaction with the 49ers as much as people were rooting for some other teams to get to the Super Bowl. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, now, I’d like to ask you to give us the gossip. So there’s a lot of talk around the Super Bowl game about Taylor Swift? 

Sara Germano
(Laughter) Maybe you’ve heard of her. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Maybe you’ve heard of her and how she’s kind of winning America somehow this year. And that includes the relationship with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, who is the . . . you can say . . .  

Sara Germano
Tight end. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Tight end of the Chiefs. Can you tell me a little bit about why this matters, why this matters about him? What the gossip is. There’s a conspiracy. What’s going on? 

Sara Germano
Where do we begin? I guess if you’re listening to this podcast, you’ve probably gleaned that she’s dating a very famous American football player who is now playing in the Super Bowl. This became an almost unavoidable American cultural phenomenon over the past, what has it been, like 4 or 5 months since they started dating. She goes to each of their games, the TV cuts away to her in the box cheering him on. There becomes all of this wider discussion because there is already like a very high volume of sports talk around football. And then you add to that, the biggest pop star in the world is going to every game. People have all kinds of feelings, pro and con, for her presence. And this is culminating with Travis and the Chiefs earning a berth to the Super Bowl. And the expectation is that she’s going to join them. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. What’s the conspiracy? 

Sujeet Indap
Well, Sara and I have talked about this a lot, but Taylor Swift, obviously a megastar, has been that star has only been rising, but it seems to be concentrated amongst, say, women, whether teenagers or millennials. But now we’ve combined that force, which is just massive. Right? Just a franchise and a personality and persona, like in her own stratosphere basically with maybe the one thing that is only bigger than her in American culture, which is the NFL football. And even if it may seems like it’s been like, created some sort of publicity stunt, as far as we can tell, it seems sincere, and they’re both generally extremely likeable people, but the fact that we can’t just, we can’t have nice things. Right?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And the NFL wants women, right? And so, yeah. 

Sara Germano
Can I actually make like an opinion point on that, which is, you know, look Taylor’s a phenomenal pop star. Millions, billions of people love her music. She’s lifting economies around the world just by playing concerts. If she can do whatever she wants, she can date whoever she wants. That said, if you’re the NFL or any sports league, your business strategy cannot be have a pop star, date one of our players (laughter) to get millions of women viewers. You should be doing something more than that. Like, it was . . . All she had to do was turn up to a couple of the Chiefs games, and suddenly you’ve got tens of millions of women tuning in, logging on to Reddit, figuring out, you know what? Like what’s that . . .  

Sujeet Indap
Play action fade, or . . .  

Sara Germano
Yeah, play action fade or just any sort of like football analytics. (Laughter) They’re doing this now, you know, like owners and league commissioners need to be doing more to actually cater to these audiences. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
This is not sustainable. 

Sujeet Indap
Yeah. And the thing that . . . there was . . . we’ve talked about this. There is discomfort around the NFL as an institution even with its popularity. And in fact that popularity has been able to insulate from, like, real kind of scrutiny. And so the NFL obviously is an extremely violent sport, particularly around head injuries. And that’s been a controversy now for several years. The owners themselves are all billionaires and often involved in conservative politics. And in fact, you’ve got a sport which is 70 per cent black. But in fact the ownership and the coaching ranks are dominated by white, wealthy figures. And that conflict and incongruence is an overhang. And so the NFL very much tries to wrap itself up in the flag and patriotism and how Taylor Swift (laughter) . . . as a way to avoid kind of real scrutiny. There’s enormous cognitive dissonance if you’re a fan of the sport. And the Taylor Swift angle may be a feel-good story, but I think it only adds to that cognitive dissonance. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so the other thing that I’ve been thinking about with the Super Bowl is it’s also like, as you were saying, it’s, we’re working out our relationship to a number of things through it, because, it’s maybe because it’s the one thing that everybody watches. So like, the Super Bowl also feels sort of political. And there’s like a racial element. It feels sort of like whatever is happening in the moment is also sort of like happening within the four-hour confines of the Super Bowl. Do I have that right? Like, what is that about? 

Sara Germano
I think you have to understand it as a TV event. Once you had tens of millions of people invested in this football game, then the networks realise, OK, this is like, this is the most watched program. We can sell extremely expensive ads around the game. The ads themselves became these mini films with like A-list stars, elaborate plots, funny talking babies, like you name it. And then, you know, you pan out from there and you instil the, we’re gonna do the presidential interview right before kick-off because there are so many eyeballs. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Let’s talk about some of the sort of like some of those moments, like the ads got big, the halftime show got big. Whoever sang the national anthem became a big deal. What are some of the most memorable moments for you two from the Super Bowl? I will start. The Britney Spears Pepsi ad was a real big deal for me, and . . . 

Sara Germano
Do want to expand on that? I want to hear your thoughts. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. It was in 2001. Britney Spears held, what I feel, the position Taylor Swift holds now. She was in her prime. She was still an incredible dancer. She didn’t have a halftime show, but she had this Pepsi ad where she basically was synchronised-dancing in a crop top in what I believe was a Pepsi warehouse with all of her dancers. And I don’t know why that ad was so important back then, but it stuck in my mind. I feel like it lives on in my memory as a piece of culture from that time that completely exemplifies that time. 

[BRITNEY SPEARS CLIP PLAYING]

Sara Germano
Personally for me, like, the top moment, like, if I ever ran for president, I would be a single-issue candidate and the issue would be constitutional amendment to make the Whitney Houston national anthem from the 1991 Super Bowl the only national anthem. Like, that is America at its peak, basically. 

[WHITNEY HOUSTON CLIP PLAYING]

Sujeet Indap
So the halftime shows, I think, have been iconic now for a long time. There was a very famous one of Prince in the rain, which people cite as the best one. But the run of late has been really good. The Shakira and J Lo from a couple of years ago was awesome. I thought Katy Perry was awesome. They’re all songs of my youth-ish, and they’re all bangers. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. As we were brainstorming about this, I was thinking, oh, I remember that the halftime shows back in the day were something much bigger and better than they are now. When I was thinking about the Justin and Janet Jackson and the sort of notorious breast reveal, among other things, they were just like very big stories. And then I thought, actually, no, they’ve been big stories since. You’re right. J Lo and Shakira was awesome. Katy Perry did the thing with the baby with the sharks on stage, and then that became a whole meme about these, like, ridiculous baby sharks that everyone seems to remember. Rihanna. That was last year. 

Sara Germano
Rihanna . . . loved it! 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Just walking around pregnant. She didn’t even need to try and she nailed it. 

Sara Germano
I was blown away by Rihanna. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Rihanna was good. 

[RIHANNA CLIP PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
And looking forward to this weekend, our halftime show is Usher. What do we think? Do we love Usher? Are we tired of Usher? 

Sara Germano
I’m looking forward to it. He has so many bops. It’s like, to your question, like, is this a good show worth looking forward to? The ingredients for a good show is someone who has like a really deep oeuvre. Like, just a catalogue of really good hits. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Like as you’re watching you think, oh, yeah, that one. Oh, “U Remind Me”. Oh, “Confessions II”. Sujeet, what do you think? Do you agree? 

Sujeet Indap
Absolutely. If you’re of a certain age, Usher definitely speaks to you. He’s an incredible performer, too, a great dancer. So it’s definitely something I’m excited about. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Me too. There will be a lot of gyrating. I really appreciate Usher’s use of gyration. Yeah, he’s. 

Sara Germano
I wanna see what ab workouts he’s been doing. Good for him. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
So for the last section, I kind of want to, I’m curious from both of you about sort of what the future of the Super Bowl is. Like, the role that it plays now, and what’s, what people are worried about is gonna happen to it. What do people think is gonna happen to it? Is it the most important cultural event in America? Is it still? And where is it going? 

Sujeet Indap
Well, the second most watched television event traditionally until recently has been the Academy Awards. And that has faded as a cultural glue, if you will. And you wonder, could that ever spill over to the NFL, which is still dominant and there’s no signs of cracking, but just the worry about a monoculture fading. Do young people want to sit down in front of a television? And there was a question this week: will the NFL ever put the Super Bowl strictly on streaming? Every empire has eventually been defeated and the NFL is the last one standing right now. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Do you think that they have to worry or no? 

Sara Germano
I think like, just to underline a point we’ve made several times on this podcast is like, the NFL is television. The entire television industry and the NFL are tightly woven. If the NFL ever decided, and they are so powerful that they could, to say, we’re just gonna take the Super Bowl and put it on, you know, Peacock or Apple or name your streaming service, the linear television industry, as you know it, would just crumble. And that is an industry worry that pretty much everyone is constantly thinking about and talking about, not only the distributors, but the advertisers, the tech platforms that are creating these streaming platforms, like this is central to that entire industry. 

Sujeet Indap
Right. And so 10 years ago, Mark Cuban who’s the famous NBA owner. He owns the Dallas Mavericks . . . 

Sara Germano
Not anymore.

Sujeet Indap
He just sold them. Yes. He said the NFL’s biggest risk would be that it would get too greedy. And in fact, what’s happened since is that the NFL has added another game to the regular season. Again, very violent sport. The violence and the injuries to quarterbacks in particular have only increased. The owners are getting quite rich in the short term. But . . . and you had an abbreviated schedule. Every game mattered. It was an appointment. So, it’ll be very interesting to see, is there a way that they just bite off too much? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
And what would happen if they bit off too much? 

Sara Germano
There’s already a concern about the pipeline of talent going into football. Like, not a lot of parents want to have their children play football because it can lead to injuries or violence. So there’s that concern about the talent pipeline going into football. A lot of people can’t stay healthy for that long with the amount of violence like endemic to the game. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Thank you both so much. My very last question is what’s your dream scenario for this Sunday? What do you want to see this Sunday? 

Sara Germano
As an individual viewer and as a sports writer, I want to see a good game. As a person, my mother, for her whole life has been a diehard San Francisco 49ers fan, so I want to see her happy. 

Sujeet Indap
And I want a rocking Usher show to remind me of being younger 20 years ago and hearing “Yeah”. And a game where it comes down to the last possession, one of these great quarterbacks is driving down the field, and someone’s gonna make one great play to save the game or win the game. And that will lead to an incredible conversation in the next day. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I love that. I have one I just realised. This isn’t maybe the right take, but I just don’t want the Chiefs to win. It just feels like too much for Taylor Swift. 

Sara Germano
She has enough. Like, I wish her well. I hope she’s happy. Like, if she’s found true love, great for her. I hope she has a fun time at the game and she doesn’t have jet lag. But I think there’s a non-zero segment of America that agrees with you, Lilah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. OK. Thank you both. That was amazing. We will be back in just a moment for More or Less. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SWAMP NOTES TRAILER PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each guest says something they want more of or less of culturally. Sara, what do you have? 

Sara Germano
So I, like most people in media, was just like scrolling through Twitter and just . . . X, oh gosh, I’m so old. I discovered that there is this Brooklyn-based house music group called Book Club Radio. And they recently did a house remix of Creed’s “One Last Breath”. And it might be the best thing I’ve heard in ages honestly. I wouldn’t even describe myself as a Creed fan, but I think we need more Creed house music remixes. Shout out to Book Club Radio. 

[‘ONE LAST BREATH’ BY CREED PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Sujeet, what about you? 

Sujeet Indap
Yeah, we’re obviously all in the news media, and it’s been a rough few weeks in this industry. And even at the Super Bowl, the commissioner of the most powerful sports league tried to dodge the media. And so I am hoping for more independent, adversarial critical news out there. Again, this kind of goes back to this theme of this, the show that the Super Bowl and many other things in this world are just very programmed now. And we need more authenticity on so many levels. And that starts with like, people out there and asking tough questions, even if it’s not the greatest business model in the world. It’s important. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s important. Yeah. That was great. Well, you both really showed up. Thank you.

I want more funny novels. It feels so light after your (laughter). But I’m reading this novel Come and Get It by Kiley Reid, and I’m about 100 pages in, and I’ve been, like, laughing out loud a lot because there’s this a couple of characters that are genuinely funny, and I realise that there aren’t a lot of novels that make you laugh out loud and there should be. 

Sujeet Indap
Do you laugh on the subway when you’re reading it? Or in a park or in public? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I do. I sure do. 

Sujeet Indap
Good for you. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thanks. (Laughter)

Sara Germano
More books, more accountability reporting, more house remixes. I think we got a good set. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
And we got it. Yeah. Sara, Sujeet, this is incredible. Thank you both so much for being on the show. 

Sara Germano
Thanks for having us. 

Sujeet Indap
Super fun. Thank you. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a read through the show notes. We have link to everything mentioned as well as to some of Sara’s US sports reporting, which is excellent. Sujeet is also a great follow on Twitter or X during sports games. Also on the show is a subscription to the Financial Times and ways to stay in touch with me and with the show on email and on Instagram. I’m very responsive and love hearing from you.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a wonderful Super Bowl and we’ll find each other again on Monday. 

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