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Niners Super Bowl LIV loss may have been a win
Think back to Feb. 2. Super Bowl Sunday–a huge day for America in general, but even bigger for the Bay Area whose beloved San Francisco 49ers looked to be the favorites. Santa Clara’s campus buzzed with excitement as students all over campus clicked their TVs on and cracked open cold ones to watch the Big Game with their friends.
The Niners, of course, would go on to lose the game 31-20 (sorry, maybe still too soon for Niner Nation), and die-hard fans who bled Red and Gold mourned their almost-victory. A real heart-breaker.
Looking back, however, this loss might have been the best-case scenario for the Bay Area. Nearly one month ago, six counties in the Bay Area began to shelter in place after the coronavirus pandemic swarmed the region. These counties continue to adhere to the strict guidelines, and social distancing has quickly become the new norm for everyone.
To think that only six weeks prior, we were all huddled around our screens together, slamming chips and dips, laughing at ridiculous Doritos commercials, and crying when the 49ers blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. Now, such activity is unimaginable.
But the scariest reality is what could have happened if the Niners won. If that had been the case, the infamous parade celebration would have been located in San Francisco and likely would have rolled down Market Street on Feb. 5 before tens of thousands of local citizens. According to the city’s former mayor, Willie Brown, it could have been a scene similar to that of the 49ers’ first Super Bowl homecoming back in 1982.
The New York Times archives described this event in vivid detail: people up trees and clinging to branches for a better view, mobs of people swarmed the buses carrying Niners, fans crammed tightly together on sidewalks. Thousands chanted “We’re Number One!” while glugging back beers and hugging one another. Police at the time estimated the crowd at more than 500,000 people–and that was when the Bay Area was half the population of today. Long-time residents of San Francisco recalled it as “the most tumultuous celebration since the end of World War II.”
The legacy of that day lives on throughout the region’s dominating sports teams. The Giants hosted all three World Series parades in 2010, 2012 and 2014 in the same location, and the Warriors partied on the streets of Oakland and San Francisco after each NBA Championship. While these parades didn’t quite live up to the ’82 benchmark, it’s safe to say Bay Area’s sports fans know exactly what to do when they bring home the hardware: rage.
While the Niners did not end with a post-victory party this year, sports fans across the country may have gotten the invisible victory they didn’t know they needed.
News about coronavirus cases in the Bay Area was already trickling in that last football Sunday of the season. By mid-March, cases began to increase exponentially. In fact, the first documented fatality in the nation occurred in Santa Clara County, just four days after the Super Bowl.
California’s quick action to socially distance and shelter-in-place avoided the abundant casualties that other states like New Jersey and New York have endured. In other words, the 49ers loss fortunately helped the Bay Area avoid the fate of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras and New York’s Chinese New Year’s parades: massive crowds that would have been squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder. Dancing. Chanting. Celebrating.
Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of University of California, San Francisco’s department of medicine, told the Wall Street Journal that a gathering of that magnitude, even as early as February, could have dramatically spread the virus out of control. “That would’ve been enough to light the fire,” he said.
This hypothetical scenario resembles the reality of one that happened during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. The city of Philadelphia held a Liberty Loan Parade to promote the government bonds that were being issued to pay for World War I. Roughly 200,000 people marched together only a week after the virus began to creep into the city. Soon after, Philadelphia became one of the hardest-hit U.S. cities, with more than 12,000 deaths in just six weeks.
The number of casualties from the coronavirus is devastating for this country already. How lucky we are that this heartbreaking reversal of fortune in a mere game probably saved many lives. How lucky we are that Market Street wasn't flooded with people sporting their Red and Gold. That most Niners fans instead drowned their sorrows of defeat in the comparative social isolation of their living rooms.
So the next time you grow sad or nostalgic about Super Bowl LIV, think of how lucky we in the Niner Nation were that day. Sometimes, it’s better to lose.