"History doesn't repeat itself, but often rhymes."(Mark Twain)
Game On!! Super Bowl LIX (59) will feature a rematch of Super Bowl LVII (57) as the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, February 9th at 6:30 PM EST. Fox Sports will televise the Big Game this year.

Super Bowl 59 will be a rematch of Super Bowl 57... except for ONE little thing--

...This time, billionairess Taylor Swift will be there to cheer for her boyfriend and his team.
So before we get started, what's with the Roman numerals? When the old AFL was subsumed into the NFL, the new and larger NFL had a wee problem-- the championship for a given season would actually take place during the following calendar year. (Major League Baseball has no such problem, and the NHL and NBA simply hyphenate two years.) So the NFL decided to assign its annual championship game a sequential and grandiose-sounding Roman numeral. If you never learned Roman numerals in school, here you go--
I =1, V =5, X =10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M = 1000. To form numbers, we stack them up largest to smallest, like this: 2025 = MMXXV. Furthermore, a smaller number immediately before a larger number means the small number is subtracted from the larger number. Therefore the number 59 is expressed not as LVIIII but rather LIX.
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Here at The Table we cannot even pretend to compete with the crush of Super Bowl media hype and “up close and personal” over-coverage, so we won’t even try… we’ll just add our $.02 to a few points in the rapidly growing heap of thoughts and low-value information.
Here’s our take some of the main storylines so far–
KC Is A Great Sports Town!
The Chiefs won Super Bowls IV, LIV, LVII, and LVIII, and lost Super Bowls I and LV. In other sports, baseball’s Kansas City Royals were formed in 1969 after the A’s left town for Oakland, and they became almost instant contenders. In 1985 they defeated the St. Louis Cardinals– their Missouri cross-state rivals– in the “I-70” World Series. They defeated the NY Mets in 2015 for their second World Series title.
And if the Kansas City Chiefs win Super Bowl LIX/59, they will regarded as a dynasty. Meanwhile--
Philadelphia Is A REALLY Great Sports Town!
Philly is what we might call a “4-Check City,” having won world championships in all four major professional sports– the NBA (4*), the NHL(2), and MLB (7**) in addition to the Eagles’ lone Super Bowl victory in Super Bowl LII. The Eagles lost Super Bowl XV to the Raiders, and Super Bowl XXXIX to the Patriots. Prior to the Super Bowl Era, the Philadelphia Eagles bested Vince Lombardi’s Packers for the 1960 NFL title.
(*2 titles as the NBA Philadelphia Warriors; **5 titles as the MLB Philadelphia A’s.)
Oh– and while we would never disparage an entire fan base, it is worth mentioning that Philly fans are notoriously rowdy… so rowdy, in fact, that in 1998 the city installed an actual courthouse under the bleachers to streamline the arraignment of drunk and/or disorderly fans.
Both Teams Are Famous For Iconic Super Bowl Touchdown Plays.
The Chiefs scored the first touchdown way back in Super Bowl IV on a play called “65 Toss Power Trap.” In Super Bowl LII, the Eagles broke the Internet– and the Patriots’ backs– with a fabulously-designed trick play known as the “Philly Special.”
But to many of us, all of the foregoing is merely trivia… as is the game itself, really, in the shadow of what we around Danny’s Table consider the most important storyline of all... and we DON'T mean the Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce drama... nor do we mean the persistent rumors that the Chiefs have benefited from biased officiating...
We mean SUPER BOWL FOOD!
The almighty Philly Cheese Steak and a proper spread of Kansas City Barbecue
What is televised football, after all, without gutsy and fattening food? HERE is a comprehensive take on the famous Philly Cheese Steak– the definition and parameters thereof, the recipe and its variants, and instructions for ordering it, along with a guide to the best places in Philly for doing so.
But if great barbecue is more your thing, Kansas City has you covered.
If you are new to BBQ cookery, making your own sauce is a great way to get started. My favorite online BBQ resource (AMAZINGRIBS.COM) provides a great recipe for genuine Kansas City Barbecue Sauce, which, in its finest manifestations, is characterized by sticky thickness and the multi-layered depth of its bold flavors. The store-bought versions commonly include fake smoke flavor, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial thickeners. By making your own from scratch, you will not only avoid such culinary crimes but also wind up with a better-tasting sauce, with which you can turn anything from chicken to hamburgers into your very own Kansas City Barbecue.
FOOTBALL WINE?
When it comes to Football Wine, think BIG! Delicious Zinfandels come all over the Golden State, but the Lodi sub-region is an especially great source for affordable and robust NFL Sunday Zin. Boldly-flavored football food cries out for cold beer, of course; and yet, as Americans become more and more wine-savvy, they increasingly pop corks instead of bottle caps for their Super Bowl sipping. If you count yourself among the ever-growing stemware set and want wine with your football, I recommend perusing the Zinfandel shelf at your favorite emporium. Like good solid husbands, $10-13 Zins are powerful yet uncomplicated. Spending more than that won’t necessarily get you a better match with your tangy KC barbecue or a spicy, onion-y Philly Cheese Steak.
FOOTBALL MUSIC??
By that I don’t mean the usual halftime lip-synching, auto-tuned pop tart spectacle, which I typically enjoy with the sound muted and my back to the screen. (Hell, I would personally prefer they brought back "Up With People.") What I mean by “football music” is the absolutely wonderful (and often unintentionally self-parodic) theme music from NFL Films, which I love to blast in the kitchen on Super Bowl afternoons while preparing my annual feasts. A piece titled "The Autumn Wind" is the NFL Films theme song for my former favorite team (the old Oakland Raiders) and is narrated by John Facenda, a.k.a. “The Voice of God.” The composition "Rainbows to the End Zone," meanwhile, is just plain pretty. And who doesn’t recognize this rousing rendition of the classic sea shanty “Up She Rises?” These and many other manly-man musical masterpieces are available on the 10 CD set titled “Autumn Thunder.” (See also “The Power and the Glory: The Original Music & Voices of NFL Films.”) A perfunctory YouTube search will bring up individual videos for your personal compilation into a Game Day playlist.
Meanwhile…
Oh, Whitney!

Oh, say– can you see? In the Super Bowl Era’s first decade, the gig for performing the National Anthem mostly went to instrumentalists, marching bands, and/or children’s choirs. Since then, however, we’ve seen a democratically diversified alternation of famous vocal soloists from the musical realms of Broadway, Nashville, Memphis, Hollywood, and wherever American Idol calls home. (See complete historical list HERE.) This year’s National Anthem will be performed by Louisiana-born multi-genre singer-composer Jon Batiste.
Most everyone old enough to remember will confirm that the late, fantastic, and beautiful Whitney Houston set an impossibly high bar in her unforgettable 1991 rendition. For properly accurate context, one should consider that America was just 10 days into the first Gulf War right then and awash with pro-USA, anti-French-Fries, flag-waving fervor when Ms. Houston let loose with her pipes, immediately followed by an F-16 flyover that reminded American and foreign viewer alike who was still boss in the world.
But First, A VERY Expensive Word From Our Sponsors–
And finally, some people watch the Big Game not for the action on the field, nor for the food… nor, even, for the National Anthem or halftime show, but rather just to enjoy the Best Commercials Ever. That’s because, due to the exorbitant cost of Super Bowl advertising, the commercials get an extra measure of clever writing and production and are considered an art form in their own right. HERE is a recent PEOPLE Magazine list of all-time great spots. I’ll leave you with my own picks, a trio that I actually find quite touching– “Commander” (Audi, 2016), "God Made a Farmer" (Dodge/Ram Trucks, 2013), and Budweiser’s 2002 tribute that ran just 5 months after the 9/11 attacks.
We at The Table wish all of you all a safe, exciting, and delicious Super Bowl Sunday.... and may neither team get screwed out of a Lombardi Trophy by dubious officiating.
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NOTES:
Most of the vintage NFL FILMS music was performed and recorded in (West) Berlin, where the world-class yet underpaid musicians of NINE sitting symphony orchestras filled the cafés and often welcomed the opportunity for a little side-hustle here and there… hence the surprisingly keen musicianship in the execution of these artistically naive compositions.
John Facenda may have been “The Voice of God,” but he had nothing over Paul Harvey, whose 1978 address to the Future Farmers of America convention formed the basis of the “God Made a Farmer” commercial. HERE is an interesting and informative piece in THE ATLANTIC about Mr. Harvey.
After the “Commander” ad ran, many online commenters questioned the wisdom of putting a doddering and perhaps cognitively compromised former astronaut behind the wheel of a 205 MPH sports car just to cheer him up. Given that it’s just an ad, I feel safe in suggesting that the old man’s test pilot reflexes are probably still sharp enough to satisfy his “need for speed” without threatening public safety. He got a billion-dollar rocket to the damn moon and back, after all… let’s cut him some slack and allow him that joy ride in the Audi if it raises his flagging spirits.
And finally, if this essay looks vaguely familiar, that's because I've updated and repurposed what I wrote two years ago for the first Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl.
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