The VICE Sports Illustrated Recap of Super Bowl 50
Illustration by Corbin Smith

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The VICE Sports Illustrated Recap of Super Bowl 50

Relive every turnover, several important incompletions, many of Jim Nantz's attempts at contextualization, and all the other thrills of Super Bowl 50. Through art.

This is part of VICE Sports'_ Super Bowl 50 coverage._

Hello! This is a recap of Super Bowl 50, prepared by the author, Corbin Smith, during the contest. He would see something happen, draw it, and then watch again until something else happened. He noticed and drew a lot of things, but missed many others. The drawings are presented in chronological order.

Lady Gaga singing the anthem while Marlee Matlin signs the words. This was lovely!

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THE BLUE ANGELS, a crew of horrible death birds, fly over the stadium.

THE COIN TOSS! It was tails!

FIRST QUARTER

PEYTON MANNING takes the field! He appears dourly dispossessed and wearing a giant poofy thing around his waist, something like an inner tube.

A fellow named McClain or some such other name knocks a ball out of the air. [Ed.: his first name is Robert.] Here, he has been drawn in such a way as to resemble John McClane from the Die Hard series of motion pictures.

The opening drive ends in a field goal! Three points for Denver!

A hungover, smelly-looking ref blows a play dead. This is great stuff.

The Panthers run an option play. The ball goes to the running back, who runs into a wall made of other human beings. It doesn't go well.

The broadcast explains something with a pie chart. Here he (she? Math is not gendered) is seen having a good time.

The Panthers—Pant, Hers, in this rendering—punt the ball.

The Panthers defense, drawn here as a black cat, destroy a screen pass play, drawn here as a screen door.

Jerricho Cotchery, drawn to resemble legendary New York Mayor Ed Koch, drops the football. He INSISTS that he didn't, and his coach throws a challenge flag…

…and the challenge is not accepted, according to a less-hungover-seeming referee.

Von Miller sacks Cam Newton. Here, Von is drawn as a cruel member of the middle aristocracy, because, even though it isn't, I think "Von" very well COULD have been an honorific for a European aristocrat. I don't know why Cam is also wearing a crown, that just happened.

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Cam "-ERA" Newton overthrows a receiver.

Aqib Talib, a Game Boy Color-type machine, plays himself when he gets a taunting penalty.

A slow-motion shot of a receiver extending his hand to catch a football but missing struck me as being very poetic. I tried to capture the scene by depicting a flower extending itself to catch pollen drifting on the wind and barely missing.

A whole bunch of dudes get in a real pile.

Peyton gets sacked.

SECOND QUARTER

Von Miller picks up Cam Newton with two hands. Still got a crown on. I don't know.

Talib, the Game Boy who can't stop playing himself, gets a facemask penalty at an inopportune time.

Jonathan Stewart jumps over a small mountain of human beings and lands in the TOUCHDOWN HOT TUB, a place of pure warmth and pleasure where he can eat cheese, smoke weed, and feed himself grapes.

Peyton thinks he is in trouble, so he throws the ball forward, for some reason. The Panthers get possession, then lose it, somehow. It was all very confusing and incompetent-seeming—much like the game overall, to this point.

The play is SO confusing that Ron Rivera looks extremely irate and throws his challenge flag. Manning is ruled down by contact, and so the whole thing is declared "Didn't actually happen."

On third and long, Peyton throws a short pass that doesn't make up the distance, even remotely. You can see him contending with aging and death in this moment, and trying to deny her presence over him. Sad.

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The Panthers try a fun two-passes trick play. The Broncos, playing in that moment as a synecdoche for the NFL at large, sniff out this idle attempt at fun and snuff it out with one quick chop.

Panthers special teams confusion leads to a massive punt return. A lot of mistakes and miscues in this extremely important football game between two ostensibly very good teams!

For a second, I saw Jared Allen's face and was deeply compelled to draw him walking a little dog.

Broncos settle for a field goal, and Jared Allen's fake dog goes to fetch it. Good boy.

My TV froze and I missed an entire play. Come on TV, there's only like 10 minutes of actual game-play in this thing.

I saw Frank Sobotka in a commercial, so I drew him. He seems so happy! The last time I saw him, in Season Two of The Wire, he was sad and dead.

Cam "Fig" Newton throws an incomplete pass. The ball bounces several times.

Panthers drop another ball. Here is a black cat trapped in a raindrop, much like the Panthers THEMSELVES.

C.J. Anderson blows up the secondary for a ripping run.

Peyton gets picked.

Panther punt turns into a touchback. I don't know which person represents which team, who is the back toucher and who is the back touchee. I don't know who is giving and receiving is in this interpersonal situation. It's very confusing. You will have to decide on your own, I'm sorry.

Devin Funchess, a man who is one hand, makes a one-handed catch.

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Cam-era gets sacked to end the quarter. The sack is from Butthole's, a local drugstore chain here in the Pacific Northwest.

THIRD QUARTER

No Gain on the first play of the quarter.

Ted Gin(n) catches a pass, then runs a healthy distance.

Jim Nantz, a clean dry towel, wonders out loud about the difference a longer halftime makes for a considerable amount of time. He clearly likes that there's something different happening he can talk about to take up airtime.

Jerricho Ed-Kochery steps on the sideline during a reception attempt. He looks so sad…

An absurd looking Broncos special teams coach makes finger guns after a good special teams play. He is so absurd looking that I could only capture the depths of it by turning him into a living, floating, bowling pin.

Emmanuel Sanders catches a loopy pass from Manning. I mistakenly thought his name was Saunders when I started drawing, so he was depicted as George Saunders's 2013 short-story collection, Tenth of December.

Peyton yells "OMAHA," refs throw a flag. It was probably a signal. NFL needed to be sure that their man went out on top. Throw some ducats the refs' way. Disgusting stuff from a league with a rotten moral code.

Another field goal. Honestly still pretty boring for viewers, but the goalposts are PUMPED.

Corey Brown leaps over two other humans to catch a looooooooong pass from Cam.

Panthers owner Jerry Richardson watches the game.

"Fig" Newton throws a "Guitar" pick.

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The ball goes all akimbo. No, I don't remember what happened, specifically, but I remember the ball was bouncing around all kooky and crazy. This was during a football play, as I recall.

A Broncos running back moves a small mountain of people several yards from the inside of the mountain. The mountain was, understandably, a little freaked out.

A bald trainer helps a player down on the field.

Satan, watching at home, is pretty amped when he hears a list of the game's on-field injuries.

The whistle blows a play dead.

Duke Von Miller sacks Cam again.

Panthers end the quarter with a shitty punt. Look at how disappointed that ball is!

FOURTH QUARTER

Nantz talks, at length, about how Peyton is feeling "at peace." I know he wasn't playing well, but implying Manning is already dead seems a little fucked up, at least to me.

Another turnover slides off the assembly line in this, the football game that transformed into an industrial fruit turnover bakery.

Jonathan "Stew"-art rushes for a first down.

I got bored so I flipped to ESPN for a second. They were playing the 30 for 30 about Christian Laettner. Coach K gave a teary speech about him at a banquet, and then his wife appeared as a talking head and talking about how much she and "Mike" loved Christian, and how Christian made "Mike" a better coach. It was weird hearing someone call him Mike. I liked her haircut, and she seemed like a nice lady.

Another field goal. The goalposts have a noisemaker now.

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CBS Stats graphic just says "FUTILITY" over and over.

Game grinds to a halt as the Broncos start killing the clock by stomping on it.

Von Miller, having strip-sacked Cam yet again, treats himself to a Fig Newton. This seems like taunting, but really it's just a nutritious treat.

After a decent defensive stand, the Panthers commit a bad penalty which gives Denver four more downs. They are very sad.

Broncos score another touchdown. The horse hoof is touching a feather.

The camera cuts to Eli Manning, who looks kinda horrified after his brother's team scored that touchdown.

Cam gets sacked again.

Cam gets kind of passer-roughed in garbage time. There's no call and he evinces VISIBLE FRUSTRATION, which is kind of hard not to get.

As the game winds down, I am bored to sleep and tears at the same time. How the hell does the NBA take all this heat for bad endgames and hacking and all that shit when the NFL peddles two-to-ten minutes of clock-killing every week? An NBA game that was exclusively free-throw shooting would have about as much actual action as any given NFL game. I understand that this is going to seem hyperbolic in context, but sometimes America makes me SICK.

Gary Kubiak get the green shower, but the pour is all clumsy and it just hits his back and not his head. Sloppy technique. Disappointing, but also appropriate.

See all of VICE Sports' Super Bowl 50 coverage here.