Overall the event was great. The dining hall , as always, served great food and their big screen was perfect for the big game. The only bad part of the Super Bowl LII was the game itself. It was the most boring football game I have ever watched. The Los Angeles Rams had proven themselves to be a top notch offense yet they were only able to score three points. The half time show by Maroon 5 was OK but I believe they should have picked another artist. At least I am happy to say that Tom Brady won his 6th ring.

As an avid watcher of all things sports, especially football, I attended this event to learn more about football trivia and betting. I didn’t know that betting in sports was such a big thing; I also didn’t know that so much thought went into it; people bet on scores, winning teams, and more. One of my favorite parts of the Superbowl are the ads. While I knew that adds were expensive, I didn’t know that they cost 1 million per 30 seconds. Attending this event made more knowledgeable about football and sports culture.

I have never been much of a mainstream sports guy. I never understood the allure of watching football or basketball, like what is so interesting about watching someone else do something? Well I think I figured out why so many people enjoy televised sports, the sports gambling that is now legal. While we are probably not old enough to all gamble yet, it was an interesting experience learning from GRF Shiv on how sports betting works, and all the lingo that goes along with it. While watching sports will not be any activity that I have interest in, I can totally see myself being a follower to win money.

Apparently they are pretty high. The educational session on the Super Bowl was far more entertaining than I anticipated. I had never before learned the ins-and-outs of legal sports betting and some of the categories really surprised me. For starters, I didn’t know one could bet on the PUPPY BOWL (if your wondering my money was on team fluff). Even more ridiculous, there were odds set for the color of Adam Levine’s shoes!

This session showed me what the world of sports betting was like and I came to understand how many people get wrapped up in it. Personally, however, I will be leaving the bets to the pros and refraining from losing any real money.

I attended the Super Bowl pre-game event and actually learned a lot more than I was expecting.  I’m an avid sports fan, so I knew most of the facts about how many SB wins Brady has, who the head coaches are, etc. but I didn’t know much about the gambling side of sports.  I think I’m far too risk averse to ever engage in gambling, but it’s interesting to see the odds for a variety of things and see who people think is going to win this or do that.  There’s so many more betting lines than just which team wins – people bet on everything from how long the national anthem will be to how many rushing yards a specific player will have in a game.  Now I have a much better understanding of what the numbers mean when I see betting odds on a game I’m watching.  I also enjoyed watching the game with other Rose Scholars, although it would have been much more enjoyable if the Patriots hadn’t won….I’m not a Rams fan either, but it would be nice to have a new champion for once.

Prior to GRF Shiv’s event before the game on Super Bowl Sunday, I knew nothing about the game that was about to happen. Despite the sport’s popularity in the United States, I have never found football to be interesting to watch. As a result, I did not know which teams were playing, nor did I know who was performing in the halftime show. While I had heard about the Patriots, and I knew that they had been in the Super Bowl before, I did not realize just how frequently they have not only been in the Super Bowl, but also won it. I also learned about how much it costs to show a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl, as well as other facts about the game.

What I found to be most interesting was the lesson on how sports betting works. I had previously thought that it would be a simple bet on which team would win, with maybe some sort of way to equalize the two teams if one had an obvious advantage over the other, but apparently it is much more complicated than that. There are actually multiple types of betting such as moneyline, point spread, and over/under. I think the way that I was initially considering is most like moneyline, or perhaps point spread. I never even considered that people might want to bet on the total number of points gained from both teams, as is the case for over/under betting. However, what I found to be most surprising is the variety of different things that people can bet on during the Super Bowl. It was far from just which team scored the most points. Instead people can bet on things that could potentially happen during the game. While it is unlikely that I will be betting on sports any time soon, I am glad to now understand the mechanisms behind how it works.

I hate the Patriots. This past Superbowl Sunday was one of the more disappointing Superbowls because the Pats won, and on top of that, the actual game itself was incredibly boring. The best part of the whole day was probably the activity that we did with GRF Shiv. He taught us the ins and outs of gambling on football games as well as the bets people would have on the entirety of the game including: what color Gatorade would be poured on the coach, the number of songs that Maroon 5 would perform, if Tom Brady would be caught on camera cussing, etc. We also learned how to professionally gamble. You could gamble on the number of points that would be collectively scored or who would win the overall game. After he taught us a few things, we headed over to the dining hall and sat down and waited for the game to get interesting… and it never did. I enjoyed watching the game with Shiv as well as a few other friends that I ended up making that day (who all happened to hate the Patriots as well), and although the game itself was a dud, I had a great time on Superbowl Sunday.

This week I attended the Rose showing of the Super Bowl. It was quite an educational experience – I learned a great deal about sports gambling, for instance, and about certain cultural lore concerning how young the coach for the Rams was.

What struck me about the game, however, was how utterly American it was. The presence of the military was very prominent, from fighter jets overhead to the branches of the military being present on the field. The singing of our national anthem in addition to other national songs, as well as the presence of American flags, signals the presence of the state as purveyor of the great game.

This leads me to the conclusion that the Super-Bowl is America’s first step towards total fascism. Here we see the origin of what one day will be grand, triumphant military parades. It starts in our sports stadiums and ends on the national mall, I say! We shall sing our anthems, praise our state, and march on towards rightful military conquest before long. If we do not bulwark ourselves against such displays as the Superbowl America as we know it may be lost!

(In case it wasn’t clear my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek for the above – I don’t literally believe any of this, but the presence of so much military imagery at the event did give me moment for pause. I hope this was as humorous for you to read as it was for me to conjure up).

I’ve never watched the Superbowl… like ever. Frankly, I don’t get football. As soon as they pick up the ball and start running, the whistle is blown and they start all over again. However, I’m glad I decided to go to this event. Shiv had us look up fun facts about the Superbowl, which helped me start understanding the game. I also learned about sports betting, a subject almost completely foreign to me.

Some say that the best part of the are the ads, and there were some pretty good ads this year. Pepsi had a great all-star commercial featuring Cardi B, Steve Carell, and Lil Jon. I especially loved Carell’s patented Michael Scott awkwardness during the ad. I wouldn’t say the ads were the best part of the event but it definitely wasn’t the half-time show. How dare they tease us with a snippet from Spongebob and not play “Sweet Victory”? I immediately left after the show because I could not handle anymore disappointment that nigh.

This event was pretty different and I enjoyed it a lot overall. We should consider doing things like this for other events, like the Oscars.

More American than apple pie and systemic racism is the Superbowl. The sporting event to end all others, the Superbowl is to most Americans what the World Cup is to the rest of the world. Two teams battle it out to be declared champions. Before going into the dining hall to watch the Superbowl, there was an event that discussed the ins and outs of sports gambling as well as how companies make decisions concerning marketing during the Superbowl. The game itself was in a word, unspectacular. The commercials this year were intriguing, but no specific commercial stood out to me. With social media, companies official accounts seem to do their best to stir as much buzz about their commercial as the initial showing might. There seems to be a definite switch from just talking about the commercials with friends or others you have direct contact with, to having the entire internet to discuss it with. This can lead to a broader audience that knows about the commercial and have interacted with the advertisement beyond the approximate hundred million that tune in to the actual game. With companies paying about five million dollars for a 30-second ad spot, a thrilling game could potentially be integral to keeping the viewership and exposure that is initially paid for.

I learned about the history of the Patriots super bowl, which is where I learned that the Patriots have versed the Rams in 2002. The outcome of that Super Bowl game was that the Patriots won 20-17 against the Rams. This years Super bowl was held in Atlanta, which will mark the 11th super bowl appearance for the patriots, an NFL record. The Rams will be making their 4th appearance at the super bowl, but their first appearance back as the Los Angeles Rams. Additionally, the patriots and the rams have met 13 previous times, but the patriots have won 8 out of those 13 time. Also, this makes the Patriots third time playing back to back Super Bowls. The most interesting information that I got from the event was the team who wins the Super Bowl will receive a $112,000 bonus. However, even if the team loses the super bowl then they will still receive $56,000 bonus. These numbers were so crazy to me because there are multiple people who spend a whole year working to make that kind of salary and some are never able to. However, these football players will make it for just playing one game.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to this event, but it was more interesting than I expected. As a football fan who watches the Super Bowl every year, I was surprised to learn that the number of fellow watchers was over 100 million people. This number was even higher than I expected, and I had never before considered the marketing implications of this. Obviously, advertising is a huge part of the Super Bowl, and I have even met people who only watch the game for the interesting and funny ads. However, I always thought that the price of a Super Bowl ad was enormous. When broken down by person, the cost is really only a couple cents per person. This really put into perspective the mass audience of the Super Bowl and the potential for advertiser that I never thought about before.

My group was discussing the best ways to advertise to this generation during the Super Bowl when the discussion turned to ads using politics to get attention. I personally do not like when ads use politics to sell products. I don’t believe it is their place to comment on certain issues, when their only goal is to make money. In this politically charged world, I think it is unnecessary to have large companies targeting people based on political views. However, I do recognize that it can be very effective for a company to use social commentary to gain consumers. I guess they can’t be blamed for using a marketing strategy that works.

Another interesting part of the event was learning about betting. The number of things that have the potential to be wagered on. I never knew how odds were determined, and while I had heard of “covering the spread,” I never understood how that worked. While I will likely not apply this knowledge of gambling in my own life, I enjoyed learning about it.

Overall, this event was another look at a game I have been familiar with my whole life. I got to see it from other angles, and it showed me a new way to think about football, especially in the NFL.

Today I watched the Super Bowl as I do every year, but this year was different for two reasons- I actually learned information about the teams before the game and I bet money (only $2) on which team I thought would win. Before the game started, we researched and discussed facts about both the Patriots and Rams. This was Tom Brady’s ninth Super Bowl and sixth Super Bowl win, Sean Mcvay is the youngest head coach ever to make it to the Super Bowl at thirty-three years old, and while Tom Brady is forty-one years old, the Rams’ quarterback Jared Goff is only twenty-four. Knowing these seemingly trivial facts before the game actually made the game immensely more interesting for me than usual. I found myself rooting for the Rams simply because I love when young people accomplish great things. Before the game, we also learned about the world of Super Bowl betting- its terminology and process. Although I did not follow the official rules of betting, I did end up making a simple bet with my friend that if the Rams won I would give him $4, since they were the underdog, and if the Patriots won, he would give me $2. Fortunately, I ended up with $2. I’m glad that for the first time ever, I was able to enjoy the Super Bowl in a way I have not in the past!

Today I watched the Super Bowl and while I like watching the actual football, the commercials are absolutely fascinating. I’d like to critique the message of one of these commercials.

This T-Mobile ad (http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl-commercials/0ap3000001015730/T-Mobile-asks-a-tough-question-What-s-for-dinner) depicts a woman texting (presumably) her boyfriend, asking him what he’d like to eat. The boyfriend types and deletes a variety of messages expressing his desire to eat tacos, but his expectation that she will want sushi. He clearly feels like it’s somewhat of a trap question, typing “you should have a girls night! ..because then I could eat tacos” and “WHY IS IT UP TO ME BUT REALLY UP TO YOU???”. He eventually sends “whatever you want bae”, to which he’s greeted with a suggestion for sushi. The ad ends with saying “Get what you want, free tacos”.

I don’t think it’s immediately clear if T-Mobile is casting this attitude of the boyfriend as a positive, but at the very least it’s supposed to come off as relatable. The audience of the Super Bowl is overwhelmingly men, and this is clearly supposed to evoke a “that moment when your girl asks you what you want for dinner” attitude. My problem is that it seems like the commercial is normalizing this kind of attitude, which I think is problematic.

There’s a well known meme that people should implicitly hide their preferences from their partners at least some of the time. Whether it’s “does this dress make my butt look fat”, “do you think she’s cute” or “what do you want for dinner”, this expectation seems to hold, and in particular, hold for men. I think this is harmful for a few of reasons.

First, it’s straight up disrespectful. By not telling the person your actual response, you’re assuming they’re not a mature adult and can’t respond to straight answers to questions they ask you. So either you’re wrongly assuming your partner can’t function correctly in a relationship, or they actually can’t function correctly. Either way, not good.

It also will likely put a wall up between you and your partner. Talking like this regularly might cast doubt on your answers, even when they’re honest. If I knew my partner regularly didn’t voice their opinions to appease me, I would be walking on eggshells, constantly afraid I was pressuring them into things they didn’t want to do.

I’m willing to admit this dynamic may work for some people. But it seems like in general this isn’t a healthy way to conduct a relationship, and normalizing this attitude doesn’t feel good.