Zoe Lang/The Mossy Log
Upon reading the headline of this article, you, dear reader, may have wondered: Olivia, as a writer who confines herself to news, belligerent opinion pieces about journalism and the occasional B-tier feature, why the hell are you covering the Super Bowl? This is indeed a good question. Perhaps there were no other reporters interested, or perhaps I merely needed a few meager dollars to offset the cost of my day drinking — that is for you to decide.
What you ought to know is that on Sunday, Feb. 8 I found myself at the Old Barn on Barbur Boulevard, sitting side-by-side with a crowd that had proudly decided that we were Seahawks fans. Bargoers boasted navy or green attire. When Seattle scored, the atmosphere swelled as if pulled upward by a single string. In a characteristically myopic bout of political overreading, I kept searching for the republic in the red zone. For a few hours, we, the audience, were not a collection of subcultures or voting demographics; we were a city attached to a team across the river, bound by proximity and habit. In a political moment defined by borders, who belongs inside them and who is pushed beyond them, this connection from a game felt important.
All week, the news cycle had churned through stories of intensified immigration enforcement, of raids that fracture communities along legal and geographical boundaries. The language of crackdown and containment saturates this political moment. And yet, here we were, a bar full of Portlanders rooting for a franchise in Washington, uncompromising in our allegiance. All across the country, people who had never visited Seattle or New England sorted themselves accordingly.
The irony is obvious. The same country that polices its human borders with such severity embraces porousness when it comes to sports loyalty. We can claim Seattle as ours as it suits us. We can drape ourselves in another state’s colors and call it regional pride. Participation is fluid unless you are the wrong sort of newcomer.
Even the ownership boxes carry their own symbolism. Patriots owner Robert Kraft was recently named in congressional document releases related to Jeffrey Epstein, who in emails suggest Kraft hire his attorney after Kraft faced charges in a Florida prostitution case. Kraft has also maintained a documented friendship with Donald Trump and donated to his 2017 inauguration. By contrast, the Seahawks are currently owned by Jody Allen, one of the few female NFL franchise owners in the league and an individual whose philanthropic profile — centered on conservation, the arts and scientific research — situates her in a different cultural orbit.
None of this means that choosing a team amounts to endorsing its owner’s politics or personal history. But the dichotomy is hard to ignore. Even our franchises sit atop different spheres of politics, fitting symbols for a country where nearly every institution seems to carry partisan freight, whether we intend it to or not.
Conversation at the Old Barn did not linger on Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy between downs. But politics rarely announces itself so neatly. It burrows in the background hum of what we choose to claim as ours.
The game itself never quite caught fire. First downs accumulated without much drama and the score widened or narrowed in trivial increments. You could sense the bar adjusting to that tempo. The early electricity of what was to come softened into something steadier, accepting of an inevitable victory. People sipped their beers, conversations resumed mid-drive. Excitement came in spikes, but it no longer carried the room, rather flickering with the neon signs.
Each of us transcended the individuality that is so pervasive in this city. What interested me was not the absence of political friction, it was the fact that I did not know anyone in that room aside from my friends. I did not know how they voted, what they feared, what forces had shaped their lives this past year. In many public spaces now, that kind of uncertainty can feel charged. You scan for cues. You brace for misalignment. But that night, the uncertainty dulled.
I did not need to know the man in the Sam Darnold jersey’s stance on anything beyond the third down. The strangers around me were opaque in every way that usually feels consequential, and yet legible in one simple respect: we all wanted Seattle to win.
When the Seahawks advanced, we rose together. When they faltered, a murmur of disappointment moved through the room like the downpour we had driven through on the way over. It was not trust in any grand sense; it was smaller than that. But in a moment when so much feels fleeting and unknowable, it was steadying to know that within those walls, a touchdown would mean the same thing to all of us.
The halftime show came and — for many in the bar — barely registered. Plates were refilled, orders shouted. The bartender’s printer spat out receipts like an anxious tic. The televisions displayed Bad Bunny framed by fireworks and choreography, a storm of Puerto Rican and American pride broadcast to millions. Most of the room kept talking.
At our table, my friends and I craned our necks toward the screen, straining to hear the lyrics over the din. We danced in our seats, half out of genuine enthusiasm, half out of defiance against the indifference around us. Bad Bunny’s presence on that field was not neutral. It was a declaration of language, of identity, of a U.S. territory whose political status remains unresolved and often ignored until convenient.
A Super Bowl halftime show is not going to change the Trump administration’s persecution of immigrants in this country. But it does alter visibility. It inserts a particular cultural narrative into the bloodstream of American spectacle.
Elsewhere that night, Kid Rock performed a counterprogrammed halftime show put on by Turning Point USA, a gesture steeped in a different strain of Americana. The coexistence of these two demonstrations — Puerto Rican reggaetón on the league’s main stage, heartland bombast at a parallel rally — felt like an obvious metaphor for this country. Two visions of belonging, broadcasted simultaneously. The bar was largely indifferent, but the multiplicity was there. My friends kept moving to the music, even when most of the room had turned back to their conversations.
To show up at the Super Bowl, whether physically or through a screen, is to step into one of the few remaining spaces of synchronized national attention. In an era when our media consumption is algorithmically tailored, broadcast sports insist on simultaneity. Millions watch the same plays in real time. Millions absorb the same images. That kind of shared attention is rare, and it is politically potent.
At the Old Barn, people who might otherwise pass each other without acknowledgement reacted as if they had agreed to something in advance. When Seattle converted on the third down, hands shot up, voices overlapped, shoulders brushed without apology. The energy that rolled through the room did not belong to any one demographic — it belonged to whoever was willing to join it.
That unity is conditional and temporary. It does not erase structural divides. But that night, it created a narrow bridge.
What does it mean to participate in being American right now? It might mean voting. It might mean protesting. On that night, it meant something else: rooting for the same team without demanding ideological vetting. It meant allowing a team from another state to stand in as a regional avatar, the Pacific Northwest’s team. It meant absorbing a flash of Puerto Rican pride on a stage usually reserved for sanitized nationalism. It meant enduring a not particularly exciting game because the ritual itself mattered.
When the final whistle blew and the Seahawks’ fate was sealed, the bar’s collective posture loosened. Tabs were closed, jackets zipped. Outside, Portland was still Portland: progressive, prickly, divided in its own ways. The headlines would return in the morning, the cable news roundtables debating the rights of millions of immigrants would not resolve themselves. The country’s fractures would not heal because of a football game.
But for a few hours, in a bar on Barbur Boulevard, a city came together over a team that technically was not even our own. We borrowed Seattle’s colors and made them ours. We danced to music many around us ignored. We watched, together, something imperfect and overproduced and unmistakably American.
The Super Bowl did not transcend polarization. It exposed how provisional our unity is and how hungry we are for it anyway. Often, participation is not about agreement. It is about presence. And that, in this political moment, feels worth writing about — especially in the sports section.
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