The Philadelphia Eagles Won Super Bowl LII & Twitter Is So, So Happy
Well, that's a wrap guys. That's it. Sports are officially Done For The Moment (haha no they're not). But football season is, as the Philadelphia Eagles are the victors of the 2018 Super Bowl. Cheer or groan as your personal affiliation demands, and at least feel comforted that social media is feeling the feels right along with you. Tweets about the Eagles winning the Super Bowl are nothing short of incredible.
The game was a close one from the start, and it continued to the very last seconds of the game. The Eagles reclaimed the lead that they maintained throughout the night (following a one point 33-32 deficit in the fourth quarter) by scoring a major touchdown and bringing their score back on top to a 41-33 lead. And that victorious score stood until the end. After an intense game and four hours of football, the Eagles was declared the winner. And people had some serious feelings — feelings that honestly, are we really surprised by?
Long before kickoff even happened, we knew that this was going to be a super dramatic game. It had all the makings of a sports drama even before a single player set foot on the field: one half of the competition was basically the most hated group of athletes in the sports world (sorry Pats fans, you know it's true), a team that's already won five Super Bowls in the past 17 years — including last year — and who played the villains in scandals like Deflategate. Laid out like that, it's basically one over-the-top accent away from being the villain in an '80s movie.
Just by default, the Philadelphia Eagles were the underdogs. Even more so when you think about the fact that the team has never won a Super Bowl. Man, who had to wait for halftime to see the drama unfold? Can a game itself be a scene-stealer?
Drama or no, when the results finally came in, Twitter was literally shook over the Eagles' historic win.
In the days and hours before the game happened, people were getting into the sharing spirit on social media. Across Twitter, people were sharing predictions, hopes, and fears about The Big Game. Fans were looking to all possibilities for clues about who might win, or reassurance that their team would emerge victorious. And hey, I don't know if I'd rely on Fiona the Hippo's prediction (she's cute but I don't think she knows much about football), but whatever helped these fans sleep at night.
I hope Fiona is resting easy now that the reality behind her prophecy has been revealed.
Seriously, it's been a weird season for football all around.
For a few weeks at the start of the season, the game itself got more or less overshadowed by a political drama unfolding across the football fields of America, as President Donald Trump got involved in discussions about players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial bias and police brutality.
In late September, Trump said that players who protest at the national anthem should be fired, igniting a firestorm (and a lot more protests). Over the next few weeks, more than 150 players chose to take a knee as a demonstration, including 16 members of the Patriots. While Eagles players generally chose not to kneel, several players, including Malcolm Jenkins and Rodney McLeod, raised fists as a demonstration.
But with the season over, that's all done with. At least for now.
So what's up next? Baseball season is right around the corner. That's the nice thing about sports. No matter what season it is, the drama never ends.
