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New England Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones answers questions from a podium at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
What was once a standard, week-of-the-game media conference before the Super Bowl has turned into one of the biggest media spectacles in the world, a paradise for YouTube influencers that's also literal hell for actual sports reporters.
"This is absurd," Gregg Bell, the Seahawks beat writer for the Tacoma News Tribune, told SFGATE at Super Bowl Opening Night. "I see people dressed like ducks, I see people with slime on their heads, I see princesses and tiaras. This is a free-for-all."
On Monday night, thousands of media members - some legitimate, some less so - gathered in the cavernous halls of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center to get an hour of time with both the Patriots and the Seahawks. For the superstar players, that meant sitting at podiums for the full hour. For the rest, the floor was open for anyone and everyone to approach them with all sorts of wild questions and requests.
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New England Patriots offensive tackle Vederian Lowe answers questions from Miss Illinois 2025 Nitsaniyah Fitch at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
"You typically can't ask these questions of [Seahawks QB] Sam Darnold or [Patriots QB] Drake Maye anywhere else except tonight, and that's OK," CBS Sports national insider Jonathan Jones told SFGATE.
Sports Business Journal reported the NFL expects 6,500 media members to cover the Super Bowl in person on Sunday, and it sure seemed like most of those folks were in San Jose on Monday night. SFGATE spotted student reporters from at least eight different colleges in attendance - with UC Berkeley, Stanford and San Jose State represented from the Bay Area, but also students from Arizona State, Bryant, Ithaca, Marist and Syracuse.
Then there were podcast hosts, social media influencers, a man in a onesie of Pokemon character Charizard, and the reigning Miss Illinois with her sash and a tiara. Players were also passing around a hat that looked like a combination of a ham and a turkey. And the questions and requests SFGATE overheard were all over the place, with some on serious topics (the Jeffrey Epstein files), some ludicrous (whether a turtle who had lost its shell was homeless or naked), and some just plain ridiculous (one reporter asked Patriots coach Mike Vrabel if he viewed the Super Bowl as a "must-win" game).
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New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel answers questions from the media at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
But it's quite different for journalists whose entire livelihoods center around NFL teams. Jones was working for the Charlotte Observer covering the Carolina Panthers when they reached the Super Bowl 10 years ago, bringing him out to the Bay Area. He thought he knew what he was getting into his first time going to this event - and found out quickly that he was wrong.
"You only know what you have seen on television, which cannot prepare you for what this is like," Jones said. "This is now going to be my 11th Super Bowl, and it feels like it's gotten crazier every year, but nothing's going to compare to that first one. Where I'm like, ‘Hold on, [then-Panthers QB] Cam Newton is where?' And when you go there, you can't hear him. So you finally give up there and say, ‘Well, I'm gonna go find somebody else.'
"And you realize there's just this mass of people. And then you're wondering, ‘What are the fans doing in the stands? They can't hear anything. They're not getting autographs. They're not interacting. Like, what are they doing here?'"
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Adam Dillon of WeTheHobby wearing a Pokemon outfit gets fans hyped up at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
Jones said nowadays, he mostly uses the night to talk to the rest of a football team's staff - like assistant coaches, scouts and folks in the front office. He even said he may not bother asking questions, instead using the chance to connect person to person without the pressure of a public relations staffer hanging nearby. As for the superstars? Jones said he wants "absolutely nothing to do with any of the podiums at all."
Bell pretty much said the same thing, too. This year is his fifth Super Bowl, having covered Seattle's three prior appearances. But he recollected how the big media event was different during his first time covering the Super Bowl back in 2002 for the Rams-Patriots game.
"It was just football people talking football to football guys in the stadium," Bell said, adding that he guessed the number of media members in attendance was "a third" of what it is now. "You would talk to the backups in the stands, they would just sit there in the seats, and you'd talk to them there. There'd be a few podiums on the field. And it was on a Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't on TV; it was a writers event."
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Attending media surround a podium to interview a New England Patriots player at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
Since the NFL has turned this into a made-for-TV event, it has usually held it at an arena or stadium. Ten years ago at the last Bay Area-hosted Super Bowl, Opening Night was also in downtown San Jose but at the Sharks' arena. In the two 49ers trips to the Super Bowl this decade, Opening Night has been in an indoor MLB stadium (2020 in Miami) and in the Super Bowl venue itself (2024 in Las Vegas).
The San Jose convention center choice for this year's event, though, was certainly an odd one. The NFL's media hotel, most of the official (and unofficial) events for the week and the league's Super Bowl Experience are all happening in San Francisco. That meant most of the media world schlepped down the peninsula for the 50-mile drive through Bay Area traffic, with one of the league's buses barely making it to the site in time for the 5 p.m. start even though it left around 3 p.m.
SFGATE overheard one Seahawks team reporter say their arrival got delayed because they accidentally went to the Santa Clara Convention Center first (which, to be fair, is actually closer to Levi's Stadium).
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A worker directs media to the work area at Super Bowl 60 Opening Night at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2026. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
That was part of the pratfalls for Bell this week. He needed to be at NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's 3 p.m. media conference in San Francisco to ask about the Seahawks' potentially being put up for sale after the Super Bowl and then race down to the South Bay for the evening. But unlike his compatriot on the beat, the UC Berkeley alum knew the Bay Area well and made it to San Jose with plenty of time for the Seahawks event - though he knew it wouldn't really be all that beneficial for his work.
"If you're trying to get something of substance out of the stars, this is a nightmare compared to what I normally get from them," Bell said.
But both Bell and Jones understand that it isn't going away anytime soon. The chaos, after all, is the point.
"It is something that only the NFL can put on, because when you actually see it in practice, it doesn't work," Jones said. "But everybody still comes to it."
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This article originally published at Mosh pits and Epstein: Super Bowl media night is a ‘nightmare' for NFL reporters.
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