Super somber in South Beach
Kobe’s death casts pall over Super Bowl festivities
MIAMI — As the NFL kicked off Super Bowl week Monday in South Florida, a seven-day stretch dedicated to celebrating the greatest game’s greatest game, scattered rain fell and gray clouds coated the sky.
The setting could not have been more fitting for the scene below.
Because one day after Kobe Bryant’s shocking death, his passing pervaded every corner of every Super Bowl event.
The resulting sadness reduced radio row, normally a bustling hub of entertainment, to a stable of quiet studios and murmurs. A MiamiDade County mayor called for a moment of silence during the welcome press conference. Most every conversation, public and private, split between the shocking end of a legend’s life and the beginning of the most joyous week on the football calendar.
Later, on Opening Night, Chiefs players sat at the outset of their dreams, high atop podiums amid hundreds of inquiring reporters. They took questions about Sunday’s game, its stakes, matchups and splendor. Eventually, Bryant’s name came up. Their expressions fell.
Not even the star power of Patrick Mahomes, the reigning league MVP, could shield the quarterback from the widespread sorrow. Channeling Bryant, killed tragically in a helicopter crash Sunday at age 41, has long been a part of his inseason routine.
“I wasn’t lucky enough to get to meet Kobe, but the impact he made on my life was huge,” Mahomes said. “The way he was able to go about every single day, and the work ethic and the intensity he had to be great ever single day. Even to this day, I still watch videos on YouTube the day before games and listen to him talk and how he puts everything into perspective about being great on and off the field with his kids and business ventures and then obviously his play.
“It’s a tragic thing, so prayers to his family. He made a huge impact on my life, for sure.”
Former ESPN senior writer John Clayton, a recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Dick McCann award for distinguished reporting who works for a Seattle radio station, has never felt anything like it. The Super Bowl, the game that annually makes the world stop, suddenly slowed out of the gates, overshadowed by another sport’s news. Aside from the international tributes that poured in for Bryant on Sunday night, if there was ever a sign he had been bigger than basketball, this was it.
“You can feel the energy is just not as much. You can feel there’s a sadness. It’s very evident,” said Clayton, who is covering his 43rd Super Bowl. “Normally you would get pumped up for a game like this: two great offenses, all the excitement, legacy franchises … but it’s a downer.”
Clayton caught the news Sunday while he flew south for the game. Mid-flight, he glanced at a television screen in a neighboring row.
It flashed with breaking news.The caption at the bottom seized Clayton’s attention, then stunned him. It read: “Kobe Bryant, 19782020.”
“The image is still seared in my mind,” he said.
Clayton, 65, compared the moment’s power to learning of the JFK assassination. As a Pennsylvania native, it also engendered memories of the late Roberto Clemente, a former Pittsburgh Pirate and Baseball Hall of Famer who died in a plane crash in 1972.
“You remember where you saw it, how you heard about it,” Clayton said. “All that.”
Like most hosts working on radio row Monday, Clayton’s interviews inevitably reached the topic of Bryant. Omitting mention of his death, and the lives of Bryant’s daughter and seven others who were tragically killed, would have ignored the biggest news of the day and failed his listeners. It would have projected a false sense of normalcy.
“We talk a lot of Kobe and some football. Because in the back of your mind, and you can hear it from all the different shows, is you have to talk Kobe.”
Eventually, as Bryant’s own league did Sunday night, the NFL will speak and play without him. Kansas City will meet the 49ers for the right to lift the Lombardi Trophy and cap the league’s centennial celebration. A few players swear they will continue to draw inspiration from Bryant’s play, his words and memory, in what could be the best possible tribute to an alltime champion.
“I’ve watched what he did in the community and of course watched him play growing up. Just losing somebody that, an icon, a positive black father figure in the community, it hit home,” said Chiefs defensive tackle Mike Pennel, a former Patriot. “His tenacity and work ethic and his confidence and everything like that, what he did to prepared to play, it rubs off on a lot guys. If you work hard enough, it’s going to happen for you.”