The best (worst?) Super Bowl celebrations

For all the cultural impact the Super Bowl has built up, from the game itself to the ridiculous ads to the high-budget halftime show, it’s honestly a crime that the following Monday hasn’t been declared a national holiday yet. While the average watcher may be going into work not feeling quite in tip-top shape on Monday, the more famous and influential among us get to celebrate without next-morning consequences — but with the public eye upon their revelries.

As we look forward to Super Bowl LVI this weekend, we’ll take the opportunity to look back on when athletes and celebrities had perhaps a bit too much fun in their post game celebrations. Here are some memories from throughout the Februaries that we fondly recall:

In 2018, as the city of Philadelphia was infamously celebrating the Eagles’ first Super Bowl win, actor and comedian Kevin Hart made an intoxicated attempt to get on the stage with the team as the Lombardi Trophy was being presented. An incredibly funny photo came out of the situation, showing Hart seemingly arguing with a security guard twice his size as he tried to get on the podium.

“Something in my head said, ‘I need to go down there with the team,’” Hart told Conan O’Brien in an interview. “The city of Philadelphia wants to see me hold this trophy.”

He took everyone in his suite with him on his journey to the field, bypassing security checkpoints by saying “I’m Kevin Hart!” Unfortunately, that line didn’t work on the podium security, as pictured.

This wasn’t just a postgame celebration. Bears QB Jim McMahon made New Orleans his city in 1986, the year of the famed Super Bowl Shuffle. Known for his antics and distaste for authority and media figures, his week in New Orleans lives on in infamy (and hilarity). That week, McMahon mooned a helicopter during practice, peed in a restaurant doorway while speaking with a reporter, and threw fruit from a balcony onto Bourbon Street passerby.

He also received death threats that week after a Chicago radio host spread a false rumor that he had called the people of New Orleans “sluts” and “idiots” (whether or not those comments were made is a topic still up for debate). The Bears, armed with McMahon and Walter Payton, handily defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl XX.

Tom Brady’s completed a lot of passes in his career, and the boat parade toss at the Bucs’ 2021 Super Bowl celebration is up there for the craziest of them. He drunkenly threw the Lombardi Trophy from his boat across the water to his teammates on another boat, who miraculously caught it without injuring themselves or damaging the trophy. I guess when it’s your seventh one, you can be a little riskier with it. I can’t see Joe Burrow doing something like that this year (or can I?) if the Bengals win.

Upon returning to land, Brady had to be held upright by another teammate due to a lethal combination of sea legs and avocado tequila. And who can blame him?

In 2012, then-22-year-old Rob Gronkowski came under fire for celebrating after a loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI. Videos of the tight end dancing shirtless were the subject of some confusion after it was reported that he had been playing with a sprained ankle that slowed him down in the game and later required surgery.

It’s almost nice to look back on a time where something like that was seen as such a big deal — and to look back on a time when pros were partying with the iconic “Party Rock Anthem” duo LMFAO. All of it is just sooo 2012. And honestly, it’s not like he had to play the next week on that ankle. This would turn out to be the first of many times we watched Gronk party shirtless over the next decade.

In the early days of the Super Bowl, when there was still an AFL and a National Championship Game, the Cowboys came up north to face the Packers at Lambeau on New Year’s Eve 1967. It was -15˚F at game time, and when a writer asked Green Bay left guard Fred “Fuzzy” Thurston how he prepared for the weather, he said that he “drank about ten vodkas” before going out on the field. They don’t call it a liquid blanket for nothing.

I’m not sure how much fun and revelry was had in that kind of weather, but the Packers ended up winning and going on to win Super Bowl II.