NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Rob Gronkowski scarfed down some chicken wings. Marshall Faulk brought the gumbo and beignets. David Njoku walked around shirtless.
It was another wild scene on Media Row this week where more than 150 radio and television stations broadcast their shows and live segments from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs (17-2) are going for a three-peat when they face Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles (17-3) in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
There are 6,414 media members accredited to cover the game and related events leading up to it, the most ever for a Super Bowl.
Many of them piled into the convention center for a spectacle that began from one radio station broadcasting live inside a local hotel in Minneapolis in 1992. It has evolved into a mecca of media, content creators, brands, athletes, celebrities and entertainers gathering in one location to hype up the big game, pitch themselves or a product.
Radio Row was officially born at the Super Bowl in Los Angeles in 1993, the year after New York’s WFAN started broadcasting onsite, according to longtime league executive Michael Signora.
Faulk, Gronkowski and Njoku were just a few of the many stars who turned out this week on the row. Faulk was named chief flavor officer for Sodexo Live! so he came with authentic cuisine to talk football and food.
“We brought you the best cuisine New Orleans has to offer,” Faulk said.
Gronkowski, the former Patriots and Buccaneers four-time Super Bowl champion, and Njoku, a tight end for the Browns, were part of an army of talent Bounty brought to its giant, two-story studio setup. Former Saints quarterback Drew Brees, Seattle’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Devon Witherspoon, Green Bay’s Josh Jacobs and A.J. Dillon, Cincinnati’s Ted Karras and Alex Cappa, and Minnesota’s Aaron Jones and Andrew Van Ginkel were among the players who ate wings with various hosts and wiped off the mess with paper towels.
“You just gotta block out all the outside noise,” Gronkowski said about his advice to players on the two teams. “There’s nothing more important than the game. There’s parties, there’s Radio Row, there’s family members asking for a billion tickets, friends asking for a billion tickets. But you just have to focus on the game because the only thing people remember is the outcome.”
Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana appeared again this year on behalf of Pfizer to tell folks the recommended age for the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccination has been lowered to adults as young as 50.
He said the toughest thing about winning three straight Super Bowls is the health of players because seasons are long and offseasons are short.
Faulk wasn’t the only Hall of Fame running back making the rounds. Eric Dickerson was there to talk about the NFL Alumni’s new “On 3 obesity’ campaign. Thurman Thomas came to celebrate Mike Ditka’s charity, Gridiron Greats, and Pork Rind Appreciation Day with Rudolph Foods.
Each of them showed their appreciation for Barkley, the 2024 AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year.
Malcolm Jenkins, who won Super Bowls with the Saints and Eagles, discussed his business ventures in art and franchising. Jenkins was the first NFL player to secure minority ownership in a Premier League team and the first professional athlete to partner with Phillips Auction House
Saints edge rusher Cameron Jordan rode around on a Segway GT3 Pro to promote the electric scooter.
Former 49ers and Bears defensive lineman Anthony “Spice Adams” teamed with Cracker Barrel Cheese, which had a fleet of 50 high-tech cheese delivery robots rolling through the city offering free cheese to partygoers.
Texans edge rusher Will Anderson Jr., the 2023 AP NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, talked up Jif peanut butter. Falcons running back Bijan Robinson appeared on behalf of Visa and Chase Ink. Former Patriots Super Bowl champ Danny Amendola promoted Olipop, a prebiotic soda. Former Patriots long snapper advocated for Light helmets.
Browns quarterback Jameis Winston, who was a big star conducting interviews at Super Bowl opening night and on the NFL Honors red carpet, came with business partner Danny Cortenraede to highlight their work together with InStudio Ventures, which helps startups and up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
“We’re doing amazing things in the sports media technology space,” Winston said.
Tennis legend Billie Jean King partnered with Dove to raise awareness of the impact negative body image can have on girls in sports.
By Saturday, the hundreds of tables and elaborate setups were being broken down and only a few folks remained.
Micah Parsons, Gronkowski, Robinson, Justin Jefferson, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye stuck around to meet with military members, veterans and their families at the USAA Salute to Service Lounge. Each of the players along with Jordan and Jacobs gifted a veteran two tickets to the game.
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Caesars Superdome ahead of Super Bowl 59 between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — As Chileans head to vote on Sunday, even detractors of ultra-conservative former lawmaker José Antonio Kast say the candidate whose radical ideas lost him the past two elections is now almost certain to become Chile’s next leader.
Kast’s meaningful lead in the polls over his rival in the presidential runoff, communist Jeannette Jara, shows how the hard-liner agitating for mass deportations of immigrants has seized the mantle of the traditional right in a country that once defined its post-dictatorship democratic revival with a vow to contain such political forces.
But much is also up for grabs about Chile’s political direction.
Kast's claim to a popular mandate depends on his margin of victory on Sunday over Jara, the center-left governing party candidate who narrowly beat him in the first round of elections last month.
Although various right-wing parties won around 70% of the vote in that election, substantial support for a populist center-right candidate who described himself as an alternative to Kast’s “fascism” revealed that, between the contrasting ideologies of the front-runners, sit hundreds of thousands of centrist voters with no real representation.
“Both are too extreme for me,” said Juan Carlos Pileo, 44, who plans to cast a blank ballot Sunday, as voting is now mandatory in Chile’s elections. “I can’t trust someone who says she’s a communist to be moderate. And I can’t trust someone who exaggerates the amount of crime we have in this country and blames immigrants to be fair and respectful.”
It remains a question whether Kast, an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, can implement his more grandiose promises.
They include slashing $6 billion in public spending over just 18 months without eliminating social benefits, deporting over 300,000 immigrants in Chile with no legal status and expanding the powers of the army to fight organized crime in a country still haunted by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’sbloody military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.
For one, Kast’s far-right Republican Party lacks a majority in Congress, meaning that he’ll need to negotiate with moderate right-wing forces that could bristle at those proposals, significantly shaping policy and his own legacy.
Political compromises could temper Kast’s radicalism, but also jeopardize his position with voters who expect him to deliver quickly on his law-and-order campaign promises.
At each campaign event, Kast has taken to ticking off the number of days remaining until Chile's March 11 presidential inauguration, warning they should get out before they'll "have to leave with just the clothes on their backs.”
Jorge Rubio, 63, a Chilean banker in downtown Santiago, the capital, said he's “also counting down the days.”
“That’s why we’re voting for Kast," he said.
As the pandemic shuttered borders, transnational criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua seized illegal migration routes to gain a foothold in Chile, long considered among Latin America's safest countries. Homicides hit a record high in 2022, the first year of President Gabriel Boric’s tenure.
Kast insists that Boric’s government is too soft on immigration and crime, which the far-right leader argues are connected although the data does not necessarily support his narrative. Boric’s approval rating has plummeted, standing now at just 30%.
Yet many say the firebrand former student protester who came to power in 2021 pledging to transform Chile's market-led economy, has risen to the occasion. Boric went from criticizing the use of police force on the campaign trial to pouring money into the security forces. He sent the military to reinforce Chile's northern border, stiffened penalties for organized crime and created the country's first public security ministry.
Chile's homicide rate is now falling, about on par with the rate in the United States. That has done nothing to change Chileans' feelings of profound insecurity.
In Libya, where fractious militias jostle for political power, over 70% of people feel safe walking alone at night, according to a recent Gallup survey of 144 countries.
In Chile, just 39% of people do, around the same as in Ecuador, which is now in the midst of a violent, drug-driven crime wave.
As Boric's former minister of labor, Jara became popular for passing some of the administration's most important welfare measures.
That matters little now. Voters' concerns have forced her to switch gears. She has vowed to toughen border security, register undocumented migrants, tackle money laundering and step up police raids.
But promises to restore law and order are more persuasive coming from an insurgent outsider who has made security a key part of his agenda for years.
“Kast has been smart and strategic in focusing on migration and security," said Lucía Dammert, a sociologist and Boric’s first chief of staff. “It has been very difficult for the Jara campaign to move him away from those issues.”
Learning from his previous two failed presidential runs, Kast has avoided topics that fire up his critics — such as his German-born father’s Nazi past, his nostalgia for Pinochet's dictatorship and his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.
When asked, Kast says only that his values remain the same. His supporters, including voters who previously spurned him over his social conservatism, now say that abstract human rights concerns come after their need for safety on the streets.
“It's not very nice to hear that he's going to separate immigrant children from their parents, it's sad, that's going to be a problem for me,” said Natacha Feliz, a 27-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic referring to a recent interview in which Kast said immigrant parents without legal status who didn’t self-deport would be obliged to hand their kids over to the state.
“But this is happening everywhere, not just in Chile. Let's just hope that our security situation improves."
Associated Press writer Nayara Batschke in Santiago, Chile, contributed to this report.
Presidential candidate Jeannette Jara of the Unidad por Chile coalition addresses supporters during a rally ahead of the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A man cycles past campaign ads for presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast and Argentina's President Javier Milei reading in Spanish "Our future is in danger" ahead of the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast of the Republican Party addresses supporters, from behind a protective glass panel, during a rally ahead of the runoff election in Temuco, Chile, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
A campaign banner reads in Spanish "Neither Jara nor Kast will make our lives better, don't vote, rebel and fight" ahead of the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Presidential candidates Jose Antonio Kast of the Republican Party and Jeannette Jara of the Unity for Chile coalition shake hands during a debate ahead of runoff elections in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
