Students came together to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, which was uniquely close to Stanford this year — it was held at San Francisco’s Levi’s Stadium. Some watched on phones in dining halls. Others projected the game on screens in dorm lounges.
“My favorite part of watching the game was the party my Resident Fellows (RFs) threw,” Carter Lawrence ’29 wrote in a message to The Daily.
All were banded together by a passion for some aspect, be it ads or the half-time show, of this country-wide tradition.
“It was great because the Seahawks won and Bad Bunny is a vibe,” Grant Conroy ’29, a Seahawks fan, wrote in a message to The Daily.
“Go hawks!!!” Conroy added. He was able to attend the game in person at Levi Stadium.
In the week leading up to this Super Bowl, the New England Patriots practiced at Stanford Stadium, causing a sway in their favor for some students. Other students’ loyalties were geographically dependent. Some were altogether indifferent to the winner.
The Seattle Seahawks ultimately reigned supreme on Sunday, which caused mixed emotions among the student body.
“As a Rams and Drake Maye fan, I am pretty pissed that the Seahawks won. As a football fan, I was disappointed with how boring the game was,” Lawrence wrote.
Many students and community members gathered at The Arbor to view the game, sporting football jerseys for their respective teams. The crowd significantly picked up in size around Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance.
This halftime in particular was contested by some due to Bad Bunny’s previous anti-ICE comments, leading to a counter-performance held simultaneously by Turning Point USA and streamed live on YouTube with Kid Rock as the main musical guest.
“I thought [Bad Bunny’s half-time show] was good, but I think that it would have been better if it was at night, because I feel like it would have had a little bit more energy,” Aria Shah ’29 said. Shah and some others chose to only tune in for the half-time show.
As Bad Bunny performed, viewers at The Arbor joyfully sang along and danced to songs like ‘Nuevayol’ and ‘Baile Inolvidable,’ and cheered for Lady Gaga’s guest appearance.
Towards the end of the show, a billboard at the stadium displayed in bold letters, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” which received loud praise from the crowd at The Arbor. The billboard highlighted Bad Bunny’s main theme of unity that he pushed throughout the show.