This week, the Marist Center for Sports Communication sent five other students and me to cover Super Bowl Media Week in San Francisco, CA, in anticipation of Sunday’s Super Bowl LX matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots. This is the first of multiple entries documenting our journey in Northern California, covering the lead-up to America’s biggest sporting event.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — The Super Bowl. An event so synonymous with the American public —sports fans and non-sports fans alike — it has become a cultural benchmark.
The Grammys are the Super Bowl of music. The Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl of stock car racing. Black Friday is the Super Bowl of retail shopping. The Met Gala is the Super Bowl of the fashion world.
But there’s no “of” to follow this week. It’s the Super Bowl. Period. The Mecca of the sports media world; everyone is there, no matter what region of the country their publication covers: analysts, journalists, current and former NFL players and coaches, and everything in between.
And, five fellow Marist students and I are right here alongside them.
12 years ago, I sat with my mother in the upper deck of the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., as a nine-year old sports fanatic, taking in the sights and sounds of Super Bowl XLVIII Media Day, dreaming of one day being a part of an event so captivating as the Super Bowl.
(To be fully transparent, I was still dreaming of playing in the Super Bowl — even though I had never played a snap of organized football in my life.)
12 years and four days later, our group of students departed from Newark on a Sunday, 6 a.m. flight, where the sun rose on a cold Northeast morning, and on a week in Northern California that we’d never forget.
After landing at the San Francisco International Airport and dropping our bags off at our hotel in Union Square, we walked to Chinatown to get lunch, then grabbed our credentials and headed to the Moscone Center West Building, this year’s site for Radio Row.
Radio Row got its origins in the early 1990s, with its modern iteration coming into form at Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 in Pasadena. Media companies big and small, as well as many colleges and universities, occupy tables in large convention halls where players, coaches and media personalities roam, all available for interviews. It did not take long to realize we were underprepared.
Though we showed up a day early, organizations near our section had already begun displaying large banners and signs to advertise their company or school. We had nothing – well, besides wonderful business cards printed by Katie Beichert’s father, Paul.
Our plans to explore the rest of San Francisco were delayed; we rushed back to the hotel and Jaylen Rizzo began mocking up designs for a last-minute poster, while William Rosen and Katie frantically called local stores that offered same-day printing. Alas, after what felt like hours of deliberating and stressing, we at least had something to display.
While we waited for FedEx to finish printing, we went to Fisherman’s Wharf, a beautiful waterfront area filled with restaurants, shops and sea lions, who continuously announced their presence with loud barks.
As the sunset on a picturesque, not too hot, not too cold, evening, Katie and I filmed our first video of the trip, announcing Marist’s presence at the upcoming media week.
At first glance, Radio Row is daunting. Held in Moscone West, over 130 tables for media outlets big and small fill the enormous 96,660 square foot hall, flanked by massive, elaborate stages built specifically for this event.
The chaos of Super Bowl week officially began with a press conference at 9 a.m., hosted by Zaileen Janmohamed, the President and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee. Later on in 2026, the Bay Area will become the first city to host the Super Bowl and World Cup in the same calendar year.
“Welcome to the region where impossible becomes inevitable… to a place of optimism, imagination, curiosity and relentless tenacity,” Janmohamed said to open the press conference.
Countless photographers and videographers roamed the packed room, while some 15 station cameras stood elevated behind 10 rows of seats, almost all occupied. After expressing the excitement of her team and the nine counties that make up the Bay Area, she welcomed Dominique Crenn to the stage.
A French-born chef, Crenn was a fitting speaker on Tuesday morning. Just one hour beforehand, the NFL announced its first-ever game on French soil would take place in Paris; early reports indicate that the New Orleans Saints and Cleveland Browns will be facing off in it. Crenn is a world-renowned chef, and in 2018 became the first woman in the United States to earn three Michelin stars at her restaurant, Atelier Crenn.
Next came the NFL representatives; Peter O’Reilly, the Executive Vice President of Club Business and International & League Events for the NFL, touched on what went into the decision to bring the Super Bowl back to the Bay Area, which hosted it in 2016. This year, the Pro Bowl, the NFL’s all-star game, is also taking place in the Moscone Center, marking just the third time a city has held the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl in the same season.
“The bar for Super Bowl 50 was high, but they raised that bar, he said. “Now, this week, we collectively look to jump over that.”
49ers owner Jed York, CEO Al Guido and offensive lineman Colton McKivitz took the podium and spoke on what San Francisco meant to them, but no one received a bigger ovation than Andrew Luck.
Luck played his college ball nearby at Stanford University, and was selected first overall in the 2012 NFL Draft by the Indianapolis Colts. Since 2003, the Colts played the Patriots in the playoffs five times, and only won once. The Luck-led Colts got smoked by New England, 45-7, in the 2014 AFC Championship.
“I do want to thank the NFL for whatever cruel twist of fate, as a former Indianapolis Colt, we are hosting the Patriots,” Luck joked, garnering laughs from the crowd.
Rappers E-40 and Too $hort brought the event home; while all other speakers stood at the podium and read from notes or scripts, the Bay Area natives held their own microphones and brought a far more casual tone.
“Go to the parties… don’t sit in your fucking hotel!” Too $hort shouted.
The day momentarily calmed down for us following the press conference. We caught up with Jamie McGurk, a member of Marist’s board of trustees, for an early lunch and a nice pause in the action down by Pier 14 overlooking the Bay Bridge.
We crammed some work in after that, firing off emails, editing photos and organizing our notes for the evening, before getting on a 1-hour, 15-minute-long shuttle that took us straight to San Jose Civic for Opening Night.
If Radio Row was controlled chaos, Opening Night was just chaos chaos. 11 podiums provided some semblance of order, but there, reporters swarmed the star players and head coaches. The Patriots went first — Nick Chiarito quickly got a question in with Drake Maye, while Jaylen took some photos of Stefon Diggs.
The rest of each team’s players and coaches lingered on the outskirts of the podium, getting pulled every which way for interviews, both short and long. By the time New England’s allotted hour was up, I was beat. Jaylen and I walked what felt like five miles in circles around the room, while the rest of the crew did more of the same.
In addition to the world-class athletes, we were rubbing shoulders with big-name reporters and social media stars — Adam Schefter, Omar Raja (creator of House of Highlights) and Guillermo from Jimmy Kimmel Live! to name a few. Given the fast-paced nature of every interaction, there was simply no time to be starstruck by any encounter.
Except for one. Issy Cicinelli.
I did a double-take when we first made eye contact. Issy, now working for the NFL as a senior coordinator of media strategy and business development, graduated from Marist in 2023.
She was a Center Fielder, too. When I was a freshman still finding my footing at Marist, I spent a Saturday afternoon shadowing Issy, who covered the women’s lacrosse team. It only took one game for me to be hooked on writing, something I originally had no interest in. Issy let me cover a few games on my own by the end of the season, and just like that, I was off and running.
Nearly three calendar years later, our chance run-in was a true “full circle” moment for me. There I was, in the midst of covering the Super Bowl’s opening night as a college student, representing both Marist and the club I serve as editor-in-chief of.
I wouldn’t be here without Center Field. I wouldn’t be here without Issy.
We caught up as the Seahawks started to take the stage, signifying it was time to get back to work. All of us had one thing on our mind.
We had to find Jason Myers.
There’s no need to go full wax-poetic about the Seahawks kicker, Marist’s most famous current professional athlete. Myers called Poughkeepsie home from 2009-13, and has since embarked on an 11-year NFL career. On Sunday, he’ll be the first Red Fox to play in a Super Bowl.
Understandably, we did whatever we could to get close to him, professionally nudging others out of the way. Finally, we got him.
I asked questions for my feature story on him, William asked some Marist-related questions and Katie gave Myers a bobblehead of him in his Red Foxes uniform.
After we got Myers, we split back up to divide and conquer, again scrambling around to film as much as possible. The event itself came to a close at 8 p.m. My legs ached from the 16k steps I had walked on the day, and my shoulders burned from lugging around a backpack filled with technological equipment for each of those steps.
We hopped on the shuttle back to our home base in San Francisco, and I retreated to my room. Yes, I was exhausted, but there was so much I wanted to write and I had to get it down before anything slipped my mind. I do apologize for rambling; it’s had to do these past few days justice with a pesky word count.
With an extraordinary opportunity in our hands, time and tiredness are relative this week. We’ll be back at Table 54 on Radio Row as soon as they open the doors and let us in to the Moscone Convention Center in the morning.
To follow along with our full Super Bowl LX coverage, click here.
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