Learn all about who most Houston Texans fans will root for during Super Bowl LIX.
HOUSTON – By now, the participants for Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans are set. In a rematch of Super Bowl LVI, The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will take the field, with a lot of high drama, intensity, and…fan apathy?
“I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Eagles/Chiefs…Kelce vs. Kelce, Taylor Swift, Reid’s two teams…blah, blah, blah.” Noted one unnamed fan. “Might be a close game, might be fun for all I know, but instead, it will just be more extended Mahomes/Reid State Farm commercials, and as many shots of Taylor Swift in the luxury boxes. Yes, the NFL dominates headlines, but who really, really wants to watch that matchup?” one unnamed fan noted.
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“Yeah, we already know that the starting lineup for the Chiefs is practically unbeatable”
However, the alternative isn’t exactly engendering much support.
“You want to cheer for the EAGLES??? You know their fans, right? Ok, Barkley is kinda cool, but the rest of them??? Look at what just one of them will do in a game…and that is a tame fan. I was contacting my representatives to see if they could get ICE to deport them.” Another fan noted.
Photo by LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP via Getty Images
At this point, even with the NFL going on a full media press to promote the Super Bowl, that begs the question: Who do you root for? By all rights, this is a binary question.
Or is it? There is a strong movement afoot in many quarters, where people cannot tolerate either the Chiefs or Eagles hoisting the Lombardi Trophy (No Coach Belichick, it forever remain the Lombardi Trophy, not the Brady) are finding solace in rooting for a third party.
That third party: The meteor.
The meteor? No NFL team, nor current player, goes by that nickname. Also, the Super Bowl, unlike the WWE/TNA/AEW, does not allow for the provision of a triple threat championship match.
Yet, is rooting for “the meteor” really a good thing, and is that even the correct thing to root for?
To answer the later question, we go with what those nerdy, smarty-pants type people say at NASA say. At some points in the anti-Super Bowl LIX discourse, people use “meteor”, “asteroid”, or “meteorite” interchangeably. We figured they could help clear this up.
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“First off, stop calling/emailing/harassing us!!!” was the first response our people got, but after a persistent barrage and threats to unleash DOGE-bros on them, the nerds acquiesced and agreed to talk to us. What they provided:
Definitions:
- Asteroid: “A small rocky object that orbits the Sun. Asteroids are smaller than a planet, but they are larger than the pebble-size objects we call meteoroids.”
- Meteor: “A meteoroid – a small piece of an asteroid or comet – burns up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, creating a streak of light in the sky.” Think all the “meteor showers” you can see in the night sky
- Meteorite: “A meteor that survives the burn and lands on the ground.”
Based on those definitions, you could argue that the real rooting interest should be for the meteorite, as the meteor is still in the sky, and the asteroid has yet to approach the Earth’s atmosphere. The meteorite is the actual solid object that impacts the ground, which, in this case, is the ground whereupon the Super Bowl is played.
However, there are a few caveats. Size, in this instance, does matter. A small meteorite likely won’t cause that much damage. The Earth receives about 48.5 tons of meteoric material each day. Clearly most of that would be dust or objects so small as to barely merit attention. However, some meteors remain more substantial after surviving entering the atmosphere. Humanity has recorded over 50,000 meteors that struck the Earth. Some are of a smaller scale, say like the size of a small dog. A few of them…considerably larger than that.
Then we come to damage potential. Given that Super Bowl LIX is being played in the Superdome, a relatively small meteorite shouldn’t impact much. An 8-pound meteorite, the size of the one that landed in an Alabama home in 1954, seriously injuring an occupant, is probably not penetrating that roof. As much as we might like to see Patrick Mahomes get felled on a scramble by a space rock, or better still, a ref get doinked before throwing a flag for a questionable roughing the passer, such things appear unlikely, even if a meteor is on target for the Superdome.
leaning on cane.
Yet, what sort of meteorite might cause damage? Well, that is where it starts getting a bit…dangerous. If an meteorite the size of a football field actually hit the Superdome (120 yard diameter), that would immediately end the game…as well as the lives of all personnel in the stadium, and likely every living humanoid in the city of New Orleans. Additionally, the shockwave, heat generated and fallout from all the detritus kicked into the air would have damage impacts well beyond the line of scrimmage. The worst-case scenario is not all that far away from the Superdome. Approximately 65 million years ago, an asteroid penetrated the Earth’s surface and the subsequent meteorite that smashed into the Gulf of Mexico set off a chain reaction of events that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other living organisms on the planet, taking millions of years to fully recover. Modern projections hold that such a strike now would drive the human race to near-extinction within a few years, with no surety of a humanity rebound.
Oh, and even a meteor could still cause havoc. As seen in Russia in 1908 (Tunguska) and 2013 (Chelyabinsk), a meteor can “explode” in mid-air, creating a natural airburst that will devastate land, flora and fauna. The Tunguska blast leveled forests for miles, fortuitous that it only hit in a relatively remote part of the planet. The Chelyabinsk meteor, a house-sized object, “blew up” 14 miles up in the atmosphere, destroying property for miles surrounding the center of the blast and injuring over 1,600 people. If either of those things were to happen in New Orleans…yeah, not good, and likely not worth the desire to disrupt a Super Bowl, even one with this lineup.
Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
As for any potential asteroids that could evolve into the “desired” meteor/meteorite, there is a 30-40m (32-43 yards across) sized object (2012 PB20) that will have its closest approach to Earth on Super Bowl Sunday. While not expected to actually get near enough to really scare anyone, for those that really can’t stand the idea of a KC/Philly Super Bowl and care little for humanity, perhaps this is your play.
Yet, if the idea of the meteor sounds fun, but the details of what that actually entails gives you pause, might you consider something less potentially painful, like, the Puppy Bowl, with their ever coveted Kitty Halftime Show? (NOTE to Animal Planet: We at Totally Not Fake News are good with giving you the free plug, but if you want to offer a small financial donation, or provide a nice puppy/kitten for adoption, we can talk offline).
Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images
Whether we get a space-based disruption to the game or not, we at Totally Not Fake News, and our publishing partner at Battle Red Blog do wish everyone a fun, responsible and safe weekend, and that you return from Super Sunday in the same shape or better, than when it started.