When the Seattle Seahawks beat the Los Angeles Rams to win the NFC Championship Game, I was overcome with emotion in a way that I’ve never felt after any Seahawks victory in over 20 years as a fan. The Seahawks going back to the Super Bowl was one thing, but this also meant that I was going to my first Super Bowl in my hometown of the San Francisco Bay Area.
I’ve been with Field Gulls in some paid writing capacity since the end of the 2016 season, the Managing Editor/Team Producer since 2020, and
a full-time employee with SB Nation since 2022. I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing no playoff wins and more postseason misses than makes since that 2020 promotion, with the plight of the 2022 Denver Broncos marking our genuine site traffic hallmark in recent years. The 2025 season has been personally challenging due to a serious family health matter, so to go from spending the bulk of the year writing and covering Seahawks games from medical facilities to actually being on location for the Super Bowl was a genuine once-in-a-lifetime moment. I’ve otherwise never covered the Seahawks as credentialed media before.
In the interest of not wanting to split this into more than two parts, I’m leaving a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor to get to the more relevant bits of what it was like to cover the Seahawks down in Northern California.
Bay Area Geography 101
Due to prior commitments, I did not fly until Tuesday morning, which meant missing Monday’s media night in San Jose. It did not seem like I missed much. There are a surprising lack of direct flights from Portland to San Francisco, and the costs to fly into San Jose skyrocketed before I could book, so Portland to Oakland International Airport was the choice. I’m no stranger to this airport growing up in the East Bay as a child, so there was a grand sense of nostalgia flying in.
I check into my hotel in Emeryville, which is right across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and in my elevator is a Jacksonville Jaguars player, which I’m 99 percent sure is Brian Thomas Jr. There’s a reason why there are any NFL players in that hotel, which I’ll explain in Part 2.
For those of you unaware of Bay Area geography, the Super Bowl was in Santa Clara and the Seahawks and New England Patriots were staying in San Jose. Their respective press conferences were at the San Jose Convention Center and Santa Clara Marriott. The Media Center, my workstation for the week and literally thousands of others, is at the Moscone Center in Downtown San Francisco. The Moscone Center is also the same locale for the Super Bowl Experience for fans.
Even without traffic, San Francisco and San Jose/Santa Clara are not particularly close to each other. This is a shitty, shitty commute.
For context, Moscone Center to the San Jose Convention Center is roughly in the same ballpark as Lumen Field to Joint Base Lewis-McChord. If the NFL ever holds a Super Bowl here again there needs to be a serious logistics re-think.
Anyway, I pick up my game week credential at Moscone Center and spend the rest of Tuesday afternoon at the Super Bowl Experience with my SB Nation colleagues David Fucillo, Jeanna Kelley, and RJ Ochoa. It’s the first time I’ve met any of them face-to-face and we had a ton of fun hanging out together and collaborating on assignments. More on that to come in Part 2.
The Super Bowl Media Center
The Super Bowl Media Center is off limits to the general public. You have to have your credential on you at all times, with wallets, phones, watches, and backpacks subject to screening prior to entry. The NFL also uses facial recognition technology to grant access, so presumably if you had any horrifically botched plastic surgery that doesn’t match the head shot in the credential application, there might be some trouble.
Moscone Center’s ground floor is where all of the television and radio action is. Media row/Radio row has all the big names you could imagine: Pro Football Talk, CBS Sports, FOX, ESPN, The Pat McAfee Show, The Jim Rome Show, Bleacher Report, NFL Network, etc. There are scores of other booths for smaller companies and radio stations, plus international outlets like the Irish NFL Show. The Seattle representation in the much smaller spaces was Seattle Sports 710 and Hawkblogger, which were against each other.
Radio Row is like one giant exhibit for talking heads and their celebrity special guests.
As for the Media Workroom, which is located two floors up, it’s not that fancy.
There are table-long power strips so everyone can have their devices plugged in, as well as free refreshments (water, soda, sports energy drinks, coffee, tea, the usual fare) and cinnamon pretzels to keep us nourished. Those who’d rather work on elevated tables with high chairs can have their needs satisfied, provided they sacrifice their power outlets.
This room is filled with videographers, photographers, beat writers, and content creators from all around the world. Bob Condotta, Michael Shawn-Dugar, Bob Stelton, and Dave Wyman are among the local contingent I see throughout the week. I’ve done Bob Stelton’s show a few times back when I covered the UFC and boxing, so I chat with him for a few minutes before plopping myself down to pretend to get some work done.
One unfortunate aspect of the Media Workroom is that the free Wi-Fi is being put to the test by, well, everyone. My iPhone does a hell of a job finding AirDrop targets that aren’t my laptop, and upload/download speeds are not exactly the quickest. It’s nevertheless relatively quiet since everyone is focused on their respective tasks. There is plenty of international media from Canada, Brazil, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and many other countries.
By the way, it’s a good thing that media can bring their own food and drinks because this is the alternative:
Seahawks press conferences
To take the sting out of an insufferably long trip, the NFL provides free media shuttles to travel to San Jose from Moscone Center. The Seahawks press conferences are scheduled for 10:45 am PT until noon, which also means the length of the trip is twice as long as the actual presser. It’s almost a completely full bus to go to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
We arrive (miraculously, given Highway 101 was inert) at about 10:15 am after an 8:30 am departure. Getting from my hotel to Moscone requires leaving at about 7:30 am because gridlock on the Bay Bridge is fierce starting at about 6 am. As usual, there are security checkpoints: show your credential at entrance, once inside place your backpack in the container for screening, head upstairs unless you’ve done something naughty. There’s a huge room where podiums are set up for 10 Seahawks players to get their scrum sessions in with reporters and whomever else wants to join in on the fun.
Media members are provided with a sheet of available coaches and players to talk to. What’s workspace for the media will soon be converted to meet-and-greets. There are over two dozen tables with name tags for players and coaches to make them easily identifiable. Out in the hallway there’s candy and beverages with ice and cups provided. Beer? Not on your life.
In a separate room, Mike Macdonald and Sam Darnold get the main stage. There is seating for, I don’t know, about 100 people? Not to mention ample standing space on the side, away from the camera crew. Unfortunately, that many reporters and only 15 minutes of questions means the odds of getting the microphone to ask a question are slim. The selection process is seemingly arbitrary based on hands raised, and naturally while waiting in the queue for Macdonald on Wednesday I was out of luck by two questions. Efforts on Thursday did not go any better. No big deal to me.
Once Mike and Sam are done speaking, we all head back into the adjacent room where there are scrums for the big names and 1-on-1s for everyone else. It’s very much a first come, first served deal. Everyone from television broadcasters to social media content creators can just walk up, introduce themselves, get the cameras (or, for some people, just audio recorders) ready, and the interviews commence!
It’s a little chaotic but never out of order. With only 45 minutes to work with, my strategy is to take the roads less traveled; not that I’m star-struck or afraid to interview Klint Kubiak or Kenneth Walker or Riq Woolen, but I know that I’m wasting time if they’re going to be regularly occupied with other people.
Over two days, I conducted 1-on-1s with Brandon Pili, Ty Okada (my personal favorite interview), Charles Cross, Abe Lucas, Bryce Cabeldue, Jay Harbaugh, Drake Thomas, Rylie Mills, A.J. Barner, George Holani, Rashid Shaheed, and Leslie Frazier—all of those excerpts have been posted on Field Gulls social media or on this site. None of the interviews lasted longer than seven minutes and with only a few exceptions, I did not prepare my questions well in advance. Just about everything is off the cuff from my memory bank while honoring the flow of conversation. Pili was someone I’d eyed for the local angle of him being a high school graduate not too far from where I live in Portland, and during the Super Bowl I believe local interest stories are always valuable.
I have prior interview experience as a track and field and combat sports writer, so this part of the job is not foreign to me. The only thing I wish I could’ve done more of was talk deeper Xs and Os with coaches, but it’s not a deep regret. As someone with zero journalism classes ever taken, my perspective is to just treat athletes and coaches like normal human beings; they have an expertise that I don’t but that doesn’t mean acting in a manner of awe or like you’re a teenager seeing The Beatles in concert.
Outside of the Seahawks roster, I did get to meet Brian Nemhauser aka Hawkblogger for the first time, as well as Tacoma News Tribune’s Gregg Bell, and FOX 13’s Aaron Levine (to whom I referenced his stint on Jeopardy, ESPN’s Dream Job back in the day, in addition to watching him as a kid growing up in the Seattle area, and I’m delighted to say he’s Field Gulls familiar!). It’s also an honor to have a few minutes of light conversation with J.A. Adande, formerly of ESPN’s Around the Horn and the current Director of Sports Journalism at Northwestern University. Somehow, someway, I did not bring up the fact that Field Gulls was once cited on ATH by Clinton Yates back in 2018, which was wild to catch live.
I suppose the highlight of press conference week is who I ended up filming without interviewing. Nick Emmanwori freaked everyone out with his ankle injury in practice on Wednesday. Mike Macdonald eased concerns before anyone could even ask a question on Thursday. Emmanwori was not scheduled for a podium spot on Thursday, but suddenly he got the first podium while A.J. Barner got the boot—this is, no lie, how I got to interview Barner.
After the Darnold press conference, I head back for the main room before the players and coaches enter. I’m walking around and just biding my time, then I see Emmanwori and immediately hit the record button. No editing needed, no cropping, just upload instantly to the Field Gulls Twitter account. It’s pure happenstance I’m on the side of the room where I can get the clearest possible view of his walk.
Always be phone ready, ladies and gentlemen. You never know if a star player’s gait is one of the most important things you’ll ever film.
That’s all from Part 1, and I applaud you if you made it this far. Part 2 is all about the other (very fun) Super Bowl week activities, the big survey conducted, and how I covered the game without being at the stadium as originally hoped/intended. See you soon, and if you have any questions about my trip then ask away in the comments!
