SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Super Bowl Opening Night is set to begin, with Drake Maye, Sam Darnold and other Super Bowl participants meeting with thousands of reporters from across the globe in a zany spectacle
that kicks off the week’s festivities on Monday night.
Maye and the New England Patriots will take on Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium
, home of the San Francisco 49ers.First, the athletes will meet more than 6,000 credentialed reporters who will pepper them with questions ranging from the standard football topics to the silly and offbeat stuff.
The event began as a daytime introduction of the teams and evolved into a live, ticketed, prime-time showcase on national television.
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The NFL will play its first regular-season game in France next season, with the New Orleans Saints set to travel to Paris.
The league announced Monday that the game will be played at the Stade de France. The NFL also has a multiyear deal to keep playing regular-season games at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.
The NFL already had its first game in Australia scheduled for next season, with the Los Angeles Rams set to host that one. It also will play in Rio de Janeiro, Munich and three games in London. The league also could return to Mexico City this fall.
The NFL has played 62 regular-season games outside the U.S. so far, with London, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dublin, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Toronto serving as hosts.
The Saints’ opponent will be determined once the schedule is finalized in a few months.
The NFL released a statement on New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, whose name showed up more than 400 times in files released by the Justice Department regarding Jeffrey Epstein.
“The league is aware of the reports and Steve’s response,” the statement read. “Our office will look into the matter to understand the facts.”
Tisch said last week he knew Epstein and they “exchanged emails about adult women” and “discussed movies, philanthropy and investments.” But the 76-year-old Tisch denied going to Epstein’s island and was never charged in the investigation.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
New England quarterback Drake Maye didn’t practice on Friday because he was dealing with an illness, the latest wrinkle in the quarterback’s preparation for his first Super Bowl.
Maye also has a shoulder injury, though he was at the team’s facility and able to participate in team meetings. The 23-year-old is in his second season with the Patriots. He’s an MVP candidate after a stellar year that included 4,394 yards passing and 31 touchdowns in the regular season.
Coach Mike Vrabel has said he doesn’t expect the illness or the shoulder injury to affect Maye’s performance on Sunday.
Sam Darnold will be starting in the Super Bowl before Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and the rest of the NFL’s Class of 2018 quarterbacks. It took Darnold five teams and eight seasons to get there.
Darnold led the Seattle Seahawks to a 14-3 record, a division title, the No. 1 seed and was at his best in the NFC championship game.
Despite an oblique injury, Darnold threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns in Seattle’s 31-27 victory over the Los Angeles Rams. He completed 25 of 36 passes and had no turnovers.
The process of preparing the Super Bowl field got underway long before the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots started getting ready for the 2025 season.
Nick Pappas — the NFL’s turf guru — chose the sod farm that began growing the grass for the game about 16 months ago. He has spent time since then monitoring the progress.
The job went into overdrive in January, when Pappas and his crew started a monthlong installation and preparation process to make sure that the story of the game is about the teams and not the grass.
The field at Levi’s Stadium will be the stage for the country’s most-watched sporting event on Feb. 8, along with the pregame and halftime festivities and concerts that make Super Bowl Sunday a cultural capstone.
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