Life Behind the Scenes of Super Bowl Week
This Super Bowl Sunday, most living rooms look the same. Coffee tables are stacked with snacks. Half the room will be watching the game. The other half has drifted into the kitchen or the garage, talking over Cris Collinsworth’s commentary. And, of course, our brilliant VML creatives finally get to exhale and watch their work live.
What almost no one sees is what happens before any of that.
During my PR career, much of it spent in or adjacent to sports, I have attended six Super Bowl games, which I appreciate, though I would be lying if I said I remember most of them. What stays with me is not Sunday. It is the week leading up to it. This year marks my 11th Super Bowl Week.
A week before the game, national and local media outlets from around the country pack up their equipment and head to the host city to set up inside the media centre. This year, that means San Francisco. For those of us working behind the scenes, including my teammates at VML, this is when Super Bowl Week truly begins.
Inside the media centre, more than 150 outlets set up shop, including radio stations from markets across the country alongside national sports brands like SiriusXM, Yahoo Sports, and FOX Sports Radio. This concentration of booths is why the space is commonly referred to simply as Radio Row. Just outside that room, major sports media outlets like ESPN, NFL Network, and The Dan Patrick Show operate their own sets, booking guests all day.
To call it controlled chaos would be cliché. It feels more like an open-air market, rows of folding tables and chairs packed with people selling access, booking time, and watching the clock.
During one Super Bowl Week, Hugh Jackman was on Radio Row on a Friday promoting a movie and stayed long with the very outlet my athlete was scheduled to speak with next. And of course, I waited. You do not wave off Wolverine. When the furiousness of the media day ends, there are PR people like me working late into the night, rebuilding schedules for the next morning, answering emails, and trying to stay one step ahead of the chaos.
During Super Bowl Week in Indianapolis in 2012, after days spent securing media for high-profile players, negotiating messaging in real time, and operating on roughly four hours of sleep a night alongside an equally dedicated team, I went to bed on Friday night thinking it was over. A short time later, I woke up standing in the hotel hallway, fully dressed in a suit, barefoot, knocking on my own door after sleepwalking out of my room.
I went down to the front desk to ask for help getting back in. The security guard who walked me upstairs could see the embarrassment on my face and tried to console me. “Sir, I do not want you to feel bad about this,” he said. “People have come down to the desk this week wearing far less clothes.” That moment still reminds me of the mania and unintentional comedy that come with a successful Super Bowl Week.
My first Super Bowl was Super Bowl 40 in Detroit. I was early in my career with the Green Bay Packers, working in PR from 2003 through 2010, and my role that week was unglamorous by design. I stacked media guides, helped distribute tickets for the commissioner’s party, and learned how the Super Bowl actually functions from the inside.
By my second Super Bowl, that responsibility had arrived. The game was in Tampa following the 2008 season, Aaron Rodgers’ first year as the Packers’ starting quarterback after the long and very public Brett Favre transition. Establishing who he was on a national stage was just beginning, and there was no better setting than Radio Row. That day included roughly six hours of interviews across more than 30 outlets. When it was over, I drove him back to his hotel in a rented car (insert non-client, standard-issue rental car here). My hotel was on the other side of town and at a very different price point. He slept the entire ride. It was not glamorous, but it worked.
Not long after that, Aaron would develop his own brand of media relations, and I moved into agency life. Since then, including this year, I have nine Super Bowl Weeks worked on behalf of clients in service of their priority projects and messages. Super Bowl spots command a serious price tag for a reason. When the work is great, it earns cultural attention and builds brand equity. But meaningful exposure can still be earned through longstanding media relationships, a plane ticket, and a hotel. That less visible work often plays a critical role in extending the story beyond the broadcast.
This year, I will be joined by my colleague Ken Woodmansee, who leads PR for our Navy work. Our goal is straightforward. We want to land double-digit interviews over Tuesday and Wednesday, then get out. We will fly home and watch the game from our couches, our work behind us, and enjoy the ads like everyone else, several of which VML has a hand in.
When I worked for the Packers, Lee Remmel was our team historian. When I attended my first Super Bowl, it was his 40th. He had known every head coach in franchise history and watched the league and the event evolve over decades. That perspective stayed with me.
I spent many Thanksgivings or Christmas mornings on a practice field or side line. And that is ok. Because Super Bowl is my favourite holiday, including all the sleepless eves that lead up to it.
