IC News

For most fans, the Super Bowl lasted four quarters plus halftime. 

For a select group of Ithaca College students, it stretched across an entire week, unfolding off the field but at the center of the machinery that powers one of the largest live sporting events in the world.

This year, 14 Ithaca College students traveled to Santa Clara, California, as part of Super Bowl LX, embedded in two distinct—and equally demanding—professional environments. Six students from the Roy H. Park School of Communications worked as credentialed members of the media on Radio Row, producing interviews and live content alongside national broadcasters. Eight students from the School of Business worked paid shifts supporting the NFL’s sprawling event operations, from fan experiences to hospitality programming.

Together, they represented two sides of the Super Bowl ecosystem: the stories audiences consume, and the infrastructure that makes those stories possible.

Radio Row, the annual central hub for Super Bowl media coverage, operated out of the Moscone Convention Center this year, with continuous interviews and live programming featuring athletes, broadcasters, and national outlets throughout the week.

That environment became the workplace for Rayahna Tryka ’26, Connor Smith ’26, Colin Martin ’26, and Molly Golden ’28, all Sports Media majors, alongside Devon Jarvis ’27 and Keenan Jackson ’26, both Television and Digital Media Production majors, who served as working members of the press throughout Super Bowl week.

Representing ICTV, WICB, Ithaca College Athletics Creative Media, and Ithaca College’s main social media platforms, the students conducted interviews, produced video and audio segments, handled live hits, and created social content as working members of the Super Bowl media corps. Their work was produced alongside that of national outlets.

On Radio Row, access might be abundant, but attention is not. What separated IC students from the crowd was preparation, particularly in moments with no time for second chances.

That preparation was visible during Jarvis’ interview with Kyle Brandt, co-host of the NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. As Jarvis moved through a wide-ranging conversation on storytelling, tone, and the contrasting narratives of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks, Brandt paused his answers to comment on Jarvis’ professionalism and command of the exchange.

“Put this on Devon’s reel right now,” Brandt said, noting that Jarvis was navigating Radio Row without cue cards or a teleprompter and was “standing here in this chaos and there’s noise, a distraction, there’s famous people,” while remaining fully locked in on the conversation. A moment later, Brandt added, “I look forward to you taking my job in a few years.”

Across the week, the Park School students secured interviews with some of the most recognizable figures in sports and sports media, including Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith, NFL Sunday Night Football lead play-by-play announcer (and face of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympic Games) Mike Tirico, and Dion Dawkins, Buffalo Bills offensive tackle and four-time Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee.

For Tryka, her conversation with Dawkins carried particular significance. Her work as an assistant photographer with the Buffalo Bills during the 2025 NFL season positioned her Super Bowl interview not as a first step, but as a continuation of professional experience already earned at the highest level.

Her Radio Row interview with Dawkins focused on leadership, accountability, and community impact, themes that mirrored her own growing professional footprint within the league.

Golden’s interview with Melissa Stark, the veteran sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football, focused on the evolving roles women occupy across sports media. Stark addressed a familiar critique often directed at women covering football and dismissed it directly.

“A guy can say ‘You’ve never played football,’” Stark said, before adding that “there’s plenty of guys covering football that have never played football.” What matters, she emphasized, is perspective, preparation, and the ability to tell human stories—the skills that define effective coverage regardless of background.

For sophomore Golden, the exchange centered on professional standards: how broadcasters prepare, how stories are framed, and how credibility is built over time. That level of access—at this early stage of her academic career—underscored the seriousness of the opportunity, even as the interview coincided with National Women and Girls in Sports Day.

Golden also interviewed Scott Hanson, posing a question fans have long been curious about: how the longtime host fuels himself for marathon Sundays on NFL RedZone. Hanson laughed and admitted that “One time … I couldn’t decide between a huge bacon double cheeseburger and Chinese,” he said. “I ordered both,” adding with a grin, “It was not low sodium. Do not tell my doctor.”

The exchange reflected Golden’s instinct for knowing which questions resonate with audiences, while also creating space for a broadcaster to show personality. In the same conversation, Hanson pivoted seamlessly to advice for aspiring journalists, urging students to “learn your craft,” “respect the audience and those you cover,” and to embrace mistakes as part of the process, guidance delivered directly to Ithaca College students from one of the most recognizable voices in sports media.

While Park School students worked Radio Row, eight Sport Management majors from the School of Business were embedded across the operational backbone of Super Bowl week.

Emma Cianchi, Carly Dixon, Jessie Lopez, Charlotte Powell, Riley Donelan, Ryan Galka, Max Marshall, and Jonah San Angelo, all members of the Class of 2026, worked as paid staff members supporting NFL-run fan events, hospitality programming, and sponsor activations across Santa Clara.

For the students selected, the opportunity represented both a milestone and a culmination. The trip is highly competitive, with many applicants each year, and students described the selection as a signal that faculty recognized their preparation and readiness for higher-level work. Several spoke ahead of time about balancing excitement with nerves, aware of both the scale of the event and the trust being placed in them to perform professionally.

According to Rachel Madsen, associate professor and sport management program coordinator, the Super Bowl is best understood not as a single game-day operation, but as a weeklong ecosystem. In the days leading up to kickoff, the host city fills with fan experiences, sponsor activations, hospitality events, and layered security and staffing systems—an environment often likened to a village. Madsen described it as feeling “very chaotic,” but noted that “it all comes together seamlessly in the end.”

The students worked within that system. Their responsibilities included staffing the NFL’s interactive Super Bowl Experience, assisting with pre-game hospitality for high-level guests, supporting wayfinding and customer service on game day, and observing how security, logistics, and staffing are coordinated at extraordinary scale.

This was not volunteer work. Students completed professional onboarding and virtual training in advance, worked full-time hours during Super Bowl week, and were compensated for both training and on-site labor, gaining firsthand exposure to the complexity and expectations of major-event operations.

For many of the students, the experience was also about proximity to the future they are preparing to enter. Lopez described the opportunity as both affirming and nerve-racking, noting the competitiveness of the selection process and the trust being placed in students to meet real professional expectations. She said the chance to learn from Ithaca College alumni working in professional sports was among the most meaningful aspects of the trip.

Galka, who emphasized that he had been working toward this opportunity since his first year at Ithaca College, echoed that sentiment. Reflecting on the scale of the experience and the path that led there, he put it simply: “It’s not every day that one can say, ‘I’m going to work at the Super Bowl.’”