Super Bowl 2025 viewer's guide

Super Bowl LIX will feature plenty of familiar faces on the field.

Kansas City and Philadelphia met two years ago, and the two-time defending champions are in their fifth Big Game in six years – much to the annoyance of many football fans.

The same feeling of déjà vu will be present in the Fox Sports booth, sort of.

Analyst Tom Brady appeared in 10 Super Bowls and won seven – both more than anyone else. But this visit will represent something entirely different and will be one of the most closely watched aspects of the day outside of the game itself.

After tepid early reviews in his rookie television season, Brady seemed to grow more comfortable down the stretch. Now, he will be in the greatest spotlight in American media, talking to an audience that should average around 120 million.

“It’s just a very exciting game for us all to be a part,” Brady said on a conference call on Wednesday. “This is an incredible event in our country and around the world, and to showcase this great game and to offer really unique insights is kind of a dream come true for me, so I'm very excited for what's ahead.”

Brady said he has learned from the mistakes he made this season and has leaned on his extensive support system, starting with play-by-play partner Kevin Burkhardt.

“The coolest part is finding out who he really is, because I talked to him enough in production meetings (when Brady was a player),” Burkhardt said. “But I've gotten to know T.B., and that's been the best part.”

Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi will be the sideline reporters and Mike Pereira the rules analyst.

“I’ve really enjoyed the learning curve,” Brady said. “I feel like we're, as a crew, all hitting our strides. We know each other better and better every single week, and hopefully this is our best game yet.”

This will be Fox’s 11th Super Bowl overall and second in three years. The game will be available on Fox, Fox Deportes, Tubi, Telemundo and on NFL digital properties with unauthenticated access across devices.

But the biggest star of the show outside the players and coaches will be Brady. He shocked the football world by winning it all in his Super Bowl playing debut in New Orleans in 2002, so why not do it again in New Orleans in 2025?

Adding to the intrigue is that Brady is a part owner of the Raiders, a divisional foe of Kansas City. His potentially conflicted roles have been a narrative all season.

“What’s been accomplished this year is exactly what I hoped, which was trying to be the best I can be for Fox Sports, to show up every week prepared and to try to be a great member of the team, and that's what I'll continue to be,” Brady said.

“When the season's over and there are opportunities to contribute to the ownership interest I have in the Raiders and supporting the organization, I'm happy to do that.”

Fox's coverage plans by the numbers (and the po' boys)

Two thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three po’ boys? That is a Super Bowl-sized number, in this case representing the number of sandwiches the Fox Sports crew will be served on Super Bowl Sunday.

Here are that and other by-the-number facts from Fox:

• 1 – Super Bowl in the broadcast booth for seven-time champion Tom Brady
• 2 – SkyCams providing views of the field, including for the first time a Super Slomo 4K SkyCam
• 11 – Number of Super Bowls televised by Fox (including LIX), the most for any network in the past 30 years
• 16 – mobile camera units deployed around the Superdome
• 18 – pylon cameras providing perspectives from the end zone
• 34 – Super Bowl rings won among Fox game and studio analysts
• 48 – microphones capturing game sound
• 53 – miles of fiber and cable installed around New Orleans
• 149 – cameras covering the game and pregame
• 2,783 – po’ boys served at lunch to the Fox crew
• 6,808 – fiber connections added to the Superdome

Agent Erin Andrews

Fox sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi will have more viewer eyes on them than ever during the Super Bowl. But both said their procedures will be “business as usual for us,” as Andrews put it.

Andrews said she relishes being the on-field “eyes and ears” for the announcing booth and production truck.

“I love that role so much,” she said. “I get so jacked up and so excited, because I kind of feel like I'm a spy or a CIA agent. I just feel like that helps our broadcast, and that helps the boys in the booth so much, and that's where I feel like I'm the most valuable out there.”

Yes, hours of pregame shows will be on again

Viewers have been making fun of the length of Super Bowl pregame shows since the Nixon Administration.

Why do the television networks do this to us? Because it works for them.

Even though the hours mostly are stuffed with generic filler, enough folks watch to cause advertisers to buy time and justify these shows’ existence.

This year Fox’s official pregame show will last from 1 to 6:30 p.m., an hour longer than most over the past several decades.

First up, at 11 a.m., is the annual NFL Films production “Road to the Super Bowl.”

Pulling in at noon is “The Madden Cruiser: A Bayou Adventure with Bill Belichick,” in which the North Carolina coach will take a road trip to New Orleans aboard the late John Madden’s “Madden Cruiser” bus.

The formal pregame show then will be hosted by Curt Menefee, along with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson and Rob Gronkowski.

The rest of the Fox game-day cast includes Jay Glazer, Charissa Thompson, Charles Woodson, Julian Edelman, Michael Vick, Peter Schrager, Kristina Pink and Cooper Manning.

Look for prominent mentions of sponsors throughout. Business is business.

Music's biggest stage

Kendrick Lamar is this year’s Super Bowl halftime headliner. He will be joined by SZA. Beyond that, who knows what other special guests might turn up?

It is all part of the sophisticated business of halftime shows, which usually draw bigger audiences than the game itself and thus are the biggest stage in music.

Modern halftime shows last around 12 minutes. The first time the Super Bowl was held in New Orleans, the show lasted a full 20 minutes.

It featured the Southern University marching band, a recreation of the Battle of New Orleans – complete with cannons - plus Al Hirt, Lionel Hampton, Doc Severinsen and Marguerite Piazza. Ask your grandparents.

'It's ridiculous'

Many have accused Kansas City of having a disproportionate number of close officiating calls go its way in recent seasons.

On Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called that notion “ridiculous.”

Fox rules analyst Mike Pereira echoed that sentiment on a conference call with reporters previewing the Super Bowl.

“I've been very careful about what I've said over the last few weeks, because I understand how people can feel this way when you get these marginal calls that go one way, like they have gone periodically now with [Kansas City],” he said.

“But I think I'll throw my harshest word out there now, because I can quote Roger Goodell: It's ridiculous. People that are talking about this really don't understand officiating and how difficult it is and how decisions have to be made in 1/26th of a second.

“That's the length of time you get to see something as an official. You don't think about teams, you don't think about players. You think about trying to be right so you get the opportunity to work a Super Bowl, so you get the opportunity to work another year in the league.”

Pereira added, “People used to think that we overprotected a guy named Tom Brady, and that was a conspiracy theory, because I'm telling you, we didn't, I love him to death now, but I didn't care about him at all when I refereed, and when I ran the [officiating] department.”

Brady chuckled on the call when Pereira referenced him. What does Brady think of the notion officials favor Kansas City?

“When I was a player, I never made excuses as a player about officials or what they should have called or could have called,” he said. “I understand they have a very difficult job to do, and there's a lot of things they're trying to officiate. If anything, I would love to try to help those guys’ jobs be a little bit easier.”

Boomer's postgame

While Fox will handle the immediate postgame activities, such as the Lombardi Trophy presentation, then hand off to FS1 for more, ESPN will offer its traditional “NFL Primetime” show from the stadium starring Chris Berman after Fox leaves the air.

Berman first covered the Super Bowl for ESPN in 1982.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.