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I had very little interest in watching the Super Bowl, as someone who pays extra for ad-free streaming experiences, has a perpetually divided attention span, and doesn’t eat meat or dips. But Nickelodeon—and SpongeBob SquarePants—had other plans for me. For the first time ever, the kids cable network simulcasted the biggest sports game of the year, alongside its network parent channel, CBS. (This was also only the second time ever that the Super Bowl aired on two channels at once.) And with it came an appropriately silly, nostalgic, genuinely good time, the start of what I can only hope becomes an annual tradition.
This year, Nickelodeon—which has recently started airing NFL games with a kid-friendly, slime-filled twist—presented its own, SpongeBob-ified version of Super Bowl LVIII. It achieved a masterful balance of a difficult task: remaining fun for people who don’t care about football whatsoever while still satisfying people who knew what a “down” was before last night. (Sorry, Dad!) To pull that off, human beings and actual sports commentators Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson, who also hosts NFL Slimetime on Nick, co-casted the game, rattling off the plays and keeping an eye on the big players. Joining them in the box were SpongeBob and Patrick, football newbies who delightfully quipped about everything from unions, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the player formerly known as Travis Kelce, who they dubbed Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend. (In fairness, many of us have done that too.)
What we saw on-screen were somewhat creepy CG versions of SpongeBob and Patrick, whose mouths flapped, hands waved, and eyes twitched in real time alongside Noah and Nate. They appeared thanks to some effects magic, with voice actors Tom Kenny (SpongeBob) and Bill Fagerbakke (Patrick) wearing motion-tracking suits and a camera-rig that allowed animators to translate their bodies and voices into that of their characters on screen. (They were, in essence, VTubing.)