A Super Bowl week defined by tension

New Orleans – Every Super Bowl week comes with its own distinct feeling, one that often reflects the mood in America or in the National Football League itself.

This year that feeling is tension.

Start with the Super Bowl city itself, New Orleans, where a little more than a month ago, 14 people were killed and dozens more injured when a terrorist drove a pickup truck down several blocks of Bourbon Street in the early morning hours of New Year's Day.

The vigil for the victims of that tragedy, consisting of pictures, flowers, candles and items placed at the scene, is situated at the heart of all the activity here this week, near a street corner flanked by police or military personnel.

Most every corner in the busy parts of town has the same presence. The show of force here is beyond that of any previous Super Bowl, including the one 23 years ago which took place just five months after September 11, 2001.

The reason is surely a combination of the recent attack in New Orleans and the political climate in the United States, which feels more divided than ever, with the new president having set off waves of international tension during his short time in office.

Throw in the nearly constant sound of sirens and the regular passage of helicopters overhead and you'd be hard-pressed to call Super Bowl a relaxing experience, despite the almost perfect weather.

New Orleans still knows how to put on a party, and there's plenty of that going on this week.

But New Orleans is also a city where the divide between those who can afford Super Bowl tickets and those who can't afford a place to sleep is apparent, and tends to run along racial lines in this part of the country.

So the league's decision to make this Super Bowl the first since 2021 without the words "End Racism" written on the field at the back of an end zone feels, at best, tone-deaf.

The fact that U.S. President Donald Trump will attend Sunday’s game makes the decision feel that much more unsettling.

On the football side, this has not been much of a feel-good week for the Eagles, Chiefs or the NFL.

At the last Super Bowl in New Orleans 12 years ago, the controversial issue was all about head injuries and concussions, a crisis considered so serious by some that they believed it could one day mean the end of the NFL.

The league has since made concussion management a priority of its health and safety programs and football and the NFL have continued thriving.

The issue making the rounds during this week is one the NFL doesn't control so easily – challenging the legitimacy of game results and allegations that games are fixed by the league. It's a suggestion that fails the logic test and makes absolutely no sense on the risk-reward scale for a league that's by far the most successful sport entertainment in North America.

But in today's world, where fact and fiction are harder to identify than in past, a lot of fans are apparently convinced that the fix is in.

The presence of the Chiefs, who have had fewer penalties than their opponents in 12 consecutive playoff games, only makes the issue more emotionally-charged for many.

Chiefs players were even baited with questions about referee favouritism this week by some individuals who qualified as accredited media.

It was enough that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had to address the issue repeatedly during his session with the media Monday, calling allegations of a league-backed Chiefs bias "ridiculous." The NFL Referees Association added its voice the next day, calling the allegations "insulting and preposterous."

But just the fact this issue has made it to the communication cycle of both the league and its officials is impossible to ignore.

And while a Super Bowl decided by a bad call in favour of the Chiefs wouldn't be disastrous for the NFL, because nothing ever truly is, it's certainly the last thing the league should want.

As for the matchup, Super Bowl LIX seems to have left a lot of fans with a difficult choice between a Kansas City team they are sick of watching win, or a Philadelphia team they've never liked.

The Chiefs, for all their greatness, have become an annoyance to many NFL fans, like the neighbour you used to like but never knows when to go home. The Eagles, meanwhile, are more like the neighbour you never wanted over in the first place.

The fact that these two teams are likely to produce a great football game seems almost to have fallen through the cracks.

But as this Super Bowl week has proven more than most, there's never a shortage of distractions around North America's favourite sporting event.

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