If the Super Bowl is the N.F.L.’s biggest stage, the Super Bowl tunnel is its biggest catwalk. And on Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs dressed for it.
Several hours before the teams took the field at the Superdome in New Orleans, photos were streaming in of the players in their pregame fineries. By 4 p.m. Eastern time, we’d already witnessed Saquon Barkley’s Canadian tuxedo, Jalen Hurts’s very “Joker” purple sport jacket and Travis Kelce’s Ron Burgundy-ed disco suit.
This season-ending outfitpalooza — the game before the game — reflects just how significantly the N.F.L. has become a league of preeners and peacocks in the past decade or so. It wasn’t that long ago that players, for the most part, had one outfit for game day: a suit. And often a baggy and sad suit at that. It was worn out of obligation more than expression.
Oh, how that has changed in recent years, as football and fashion have morphed from strangers to spouses. (This is, after all, a sports league with its own fashion editor.)
Whatever ignited the tunnel walk revolution, it is now its own competition. Players now enlist stylists and cozy ever closer to brands, scrounging together the most “you can’t have this” ensemble for any given Sunday.
If you wagered that players would dial things down for the Super Bowl — lean toward something sober for the weightiest game of the year — you’d have lost that prop bet.
This year’s Super Bowl walk-up was a buffet of furs (maybe though, this was a nod to Broadway Joe Namath), spangled sleeveless suits and more Louis Vuitton duffels than the private jet terminal in Nice.
There is, evidently, no squelching the attention-seeking appetites that course through the league.
This is just how the N.F.L. is now. It is a league of dandies with biceps the size of bread loaves. The players in their Trix-hued suits and sprinkling of spangles walked down the tunnel on Sunday afternoon offering a fitting culmination to this year in pro football.
Some of Sunday’s other memorable looks:
