The Super Bowl is the pinnacle, the extravaganza, of American football.
But it is also international. It really does bring the world together.
And not just among the over 2,000 media members from across the globe who are in the Bay Area this week to cover the Seahawks, the Patriots and Super Bowl 60.
I was standing at the San Antonio trolley stop waiting for a Valley Transit Authority train in downtown San Jose after dinner Sunday night. The Seahawks had checked into their Super Bowl hotel down the block a couple hours earlier.
A man with accented English walked up to me. He saw the United States Army hoodie with the patch of the 1st Armored Division on the sleeve I was wearing.
“You were U.S. Army?” the man, with the scruff start of a dark beard, asked. He was maybe 40, 45 years old.
“I was,” I replied.
“Were you?”
“I wasn’t IN your Army. I was WITH your Army,” he said.
“I was an interpreter, in my country. Afghanistan.”
Instantly, I knew this guy was solid.
Interpreters who’ve worked with our military in Iraq and Afghanistan are unique. They have earned high regard from American officers and the sergeants who worked with them in theater during the wars there, and in Iraq, for risking their lives to help U.S. soldiers. In turn, they felt they were aiding their people’s push for freedom. The Americans who deployed there marvel, still, at the interpreters’ devotion to their work for the U.S. military. The interpreters saw it as protecting their country from its complicated, horrific history yet co-existence with the Taliban.
At the trolley stop in downtown San Jose, the Afghan man asked me where I was going.
“To my hotel, out by the airport,” I told the man with a scruff of a beard, maybe 45 years old.
“I’ve got a Lyft coming. I’m going to the casino. Ride with me.”
The Bay 101 Casino is across the street from my hotel near the San Jose Airport. Now, I don’t advise anyone jumping in a shared ride with a passenger you don’t know, in a car with a driver you don’t know. But I believed him. His instant, earnest appreciation for the military, his assumption I was in it, and his brief sketch of his role in the war in Afghanistan convinced me he was sincere.
“Please,” he said, “I’ll give you a ride. Don’t wait on the train. C’mon.”
The car pulls up. We get in.
The drive to casino by my hotel is maybe 15 minutes.
“The American lieutenants, the captains, they all called me ‘MK,’” he said, adding his real name is Mohammad.
He also said his last name, beginning with K, so quickly in his accented English I won’t guess at it or its spelling.
“Do you have a family?” I asked.
“Six kids,” he said, proudly. “They are back home, with my wife.”
Home is one of the southern provinces of Afghanistan. The U.S. military was in that part of his country until its complete withdrawal in 2021. He’d just visited there for nearly two months. I can tell he’s sad he’s here and not there.
MK says he’s in Silicon Valley for work. But he’d rather talk to me about home. About the tricky relationship his people have with the Taliban, providers for basic necessities of modern life such as internet connectivity in Afghanistan, yet repressors of its people. About the American soldiers he met and worked for there.
He beamed talking about his missions with the U.S. Army. He said he had so many close calls almost dying, roadside IEDs that exploded on the sides of vehicles he wasn’t riding on. He asked what I did in the Army. He said he respected me.
The car pulled into the casino front drive, across the street from my hotel. We get out. He’s going inside to meet a friend, he says, another American military officer he met in Afghanistan. MK says he doesn’t gamble. He’s just here to see his friend gambling.
I shake MK’s hand. I thank him, not just for the ride but for his instant friendship, and his respect for our military.
“I’ll walk you to the corner,” MK says.
“No, that’s OK. Thank you,” I say.
“No, I insist. It’s what we do in my country.”
So MK walks me the 100 yards or so to the street corner. We shake hands again.
“Thank you, Gregg,” MK says. “All the best.”
He walks back to the casino with a smile.
All the best to you, MK.
Coaches penned like cattle
The Super Bowl media night, dubbed Opening Night, Monday was an odd scene. As usual.
Usually, Super Bowl media nights are in basketball and/or hockey arenas in the host city. They used to be in the game stadiums, on a Tuesday afternoon. Now they are indoors in primetime, for live television broadcasts and to monetize it by admitting fans.
This time, it was in a warehouse-like hall inside the San Jose Convention Center. Fans were pushed into one corner behind metal barriers, the kind used for crowd control on city streets. Seahawks fans yelled and chanted for their heroes, even though many of the players were hundreds of yards from them across the massive space.
That was weird.
Where the league put the coaches was weirder.
Head coach Mike Macdonald got his own podium, a featured spot in front of cameras in the center of the hall. His assistants coaches were in a pen. Like cattle.
They were milling around and staring back at the passers-by while inside a circled of those metal barriers. They really did remind me of cows waiting to be fed.
Klint Kubiak was in a dark corner on the far right of the pen. A lot of photographers and reporters asked me where he was. They wanted to talk to and photograph the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. No one could see to find him.
I stumbled across him while trying to find a bathroom. My News Tribune colleague Brian Hayes got my text I’d found Kubiak, and joined me.
So that’s where I asked Kubiak questions about the Raiders job — “I’m all in” on this Super Bowl, he’ll deal with that Monday.
One of the 32 men with the most coveted jobs in their profession, in a dark corner of a convention hall inside a cattle pen.
Good luck to Klint Kubiak.
Grey Zabel’s a stud (continued)
A pushy woman who said she was from CNBC was asking Seahawks players during interview time Tuesday inside the convention center if they were into financial investments and planning — and if they were, what specifically do they invest in.
She asked Grey Zabel.
The rookie starting left guard from Pierre, South Dakota, and North Dakota State who’s been a total star in his debut season, giving up just two sacks in 19 games among other brilliance, said: “The biggest things I think you should invest in are: Yourself, your family, and those who love you.
“Spend most of your time and resources you can on them.”
The dad, husband and son in me smiled.
The CNBC woman did not.
“No, I mean, what do you REALLY invest in? With your MONEY?” she said/demanded.
Because he’s more polite than I would have been, Zabel responded he’s noticed metals have dipped recently, that he knows how volatile bitcoin is, and that he likes safer investments — to put back into his family’s farm back home in South Dakota.
Grey Zabel’s a stud.
What else I’m seeing at the Super Bowl
*There aren’t a lot of fans around town here in San Jose, where I am staying because the Seahawks are staying and practicing down here. The NFL Super Bowl fan fest and other events are up in San Francisco, an hour’s drive (if you’re lucky) north along the west shore of San Francisco Bay. I’m told there are far more football fans up there. And a majority of them appear to be Seahawks fans.
*Why was Herb Albert music playing on the convention center overhead speakers as Sam Darnold and his Seahawks teammates had their interview session at media night? *Went to the Super Bowl Media Party at EA Sports headquarters in Redwood City Tuesday night. It was packed early on in the evening, more people than the indoor spaces and studios could accommodate. So it spilled over outside, to the edge of a turf football field with MADDEN game branding printed in the blue end zones. I think it was blue. It was dark.
Of course they had video-game displays to show off. I sent my son, a graduated college soccer player, a video of the soccer display.
The FIFA26 video-game display at the Super Bowl Media Party at EA Sports’ headquarters in Redwood City last night. pic.twitter.com/a3tz9dTKSo
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) February 4, 2026
EA Sports also offered guests to stand with a football helmet and pose for this:
EA Sports also did this for the guests: pic.twitter.com/03ocMjgSzv
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) February 4, 2026
*More later. Gotta get back to the convention center for more Seahawks interviews. I can hear another Herb Alpert song playing.
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