For our 83rd Deep Dive, we sat down with sports content creator Tanner Anderson to cover all things Super Bowl 2024.
Tanner joined Clapper in 2023 and has been creating sports content ever since. He’s a lover of all sports and covers everything from best Super Bowl commercials to the most profitable teams and highest paid coaches. In this interview, we talked about this year’s football season, the best Super Bowl commercials, his content plans for 2024, and more!
Keep reading this Deep Dive to follow this creator’s inspiring story. Make sure to tune in every Thursday at 5pm CT on our @ClapperCreator account to listen to the bonus questions that will only be available on our live Radio show: Clapper Talks.
How would you assess the overall performance and competitiveness of this year’s football season compared to previous years?
Well, there’s no clear-cut favorite and there hasn’t been all year. I mean, the Baltimore Ravens kind of dominated the regular season. They won eight games against powerful teams, by thirty plus points. But you know, the nuance of football is the best team doesn’t always win and single elimination. That’s kind of what Baltimore ran into, and San Francisco on paper is a far better team than the Kansas City Chiefs.
I don’t know how old you guys are, but in my generation Michael Jordan was the king, he was unbeatable. And now Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, has this aura around him of invincibility. So even though his team’s not as good as the Niners, you can’t really bet against them. And then of course, we have our Swiftie angle. The NFL might be calling some plays might be a little controversial because they want to see Taylor celebrating on the field with her man. It was a pretty good season as far as competitiveness goes.
What sparked your interest in learning more about sports? Was this something you’ve always done?
I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. And I used to sit in the backyard and I would simulate these games in my mind. I have almost a photographic memory and I’d just memorize these statistics all growing up, and would pull them out of thin air. Then I got older, work and life happen, and I make movies for a living. A year and a half ago I started having conversations about sports with my friends, bringing up all these actual statistics from my memory. Then I just started making fun videos that I would send to my friends. I did a thing called the Worst Super Bowl Halftime Performances, and I called Adam Levine the human embodiment of a Chipotle bag. It went viral and I was like, oh, maybe we have something. So I just started making videos that I was interested in around sports, trying to educate younger generations on the history of sports.
I’ll never forget sitting down with my grandfather before he passed away and talking about the best players in all these different sports. Even though we’ve watched the same things, for the most part, we had different perspectives because of what the nostalgia meant to us. And what those memories and those people mean to you. And you see it right now with kids thinking LeBron James is the greatest player ever. There’s not a single person in the world that watched Michael Jordan play basketball in his prime and thinks that LeBron James is better than that. But kids, because this is what they’re experiencing, that’s how they feel. And who’s going to tell them that they’re wrong? But they also need to be educated on who David Thompson and Dr. Jay are, and how Michael Jordan who kind of changed the course of how basketball was played.
You talk a lot about Superbowl commercials. What year was the best for commercials?
Not a year – I just know my favorites! The one that stuck with me was a Tabasco commercial. It made me understand humor for the first time. It’s a fly buzzing around and a man is putting a bunch of Tabasco onto a piece of food. He’s eating it and the mosquito flies down and bites him, then flies off and explodes. Tabasco is trying to get the point across in such a simple way. I must have been eight years old, but that really stuck with me.
And then probably my favorite ever commercial is the Terry Tate Office Linebacker ones that Reebok did. Those commercials were actually done by movie producers, and it was the first commercial that Rawson Marshall Thurber directed out of USC, and his first movie after that was a movie called Dodgeball. He started off directing commercials but he asked them to direct them as if they were movies. So you got these little vignettes of comedy movies, and they fit a three act break into three minutes. Terry Tate Office Linebacker’s probably my favorite commercial ever.
Looking ahead, what are your predictions for the playoffs and the Super Bowl, based on what you’ve seen so far? Do you think the Taylor Swift effect will have anything with the chiefs possibly winning?
We live in a capitalistic society and that’s the bottom line. The NFL has made $330 million in excess revenue because of T-Swift, so to say it’s not a factor would be bullshit. But I also think if you push it to say the Chiefs will win because of that, that’s BS too. Patrick Mahomes is starting to get that aura around him that is Michael Jordan-esque. The Chiefs have no business being in this game. Their secondaries really came around, their defensive line is stepping up, their offensive line has been beat up the entire season. They have receivers that literally cannot catch the ball, but this guy is special. Betting against him is almost an asinine proposition and more than likely a losing bet. So predictions, I think the Chiefs are gonna win. The way the Niners win is they have to control the clock. They have to run the ball.
When did you first join Clapper and how has your experience been on the app?
I joined Clapper probably eight, nine months ago, back when everything with TikTok was happening. My trainer was talking about you guys, about the platform, and how I should check it out. So I signed up for an account and started posting on there. On the other platforms, you don’t check comments because generally they’re not the most flattering or kind. But on Clapper, the comments are really supportive. People are really kind, which is a rarity for the internet in particular. I don’t know if it’s because the demographic skews a little bit older, but I found it to be a welcoming environment.
When I first started Clapper, I had a second account for fun. There’s such hypocrisy in politics on both sides of the fence, so I would make fun of both sides and crack jokes and I put it only on here. And I deleted it after three months and 15,000 followers. It was a big hit but after like three months, I didn’t want to do it anymore.
How do you plan to expand the Sports Coverage community on Clapper? Do you plan on hosting more Lives/Radios? I think the community would really enjoy your insights.
Honestly I’ve never thought about it. I’ve never collaborated with anybody; I do everything alone. I don’t do it for a reason other than I enjoy it. There’s no ulterior motive, I don’t want to monetize it or become famous, I just enjoy doing it. But I’ll be talking to people who were in this Radio because it’s interesting getting to know more like-minded individuals. Especially as you get older, it’s harder
Tell us more about your preparation when filming videos? Are you just opening the camera and talking or do you have a set script?
I’ve planned my entire year already. Right now I’m doing the best sports commercials ever, then I’m going to do the greatest ESPN commercials of all time, then we’re gonna do the greatest Michael Jordan commercials. After that, I’m going to do the greatest sports movie scenes, the greatest sports movie speeches, the highest grossing sports films, the greatest movie endings, the greatest movie introductions, and the richest actors in the world. Then I’m my best NBA owners, worst NBA GMs, worst coaches, and worst contracts in NBA history. I’m going to do some that try to intertwine sports and movies into one. And then after I do that, I’m probably going to venture back towards some movie content.
We’re so excited to learn more from you and your content in 2024!
I’m looking forward it! You have to enjoy doing it or it becomes a job. The thing with content is 99.9% of us are never going to make any money. For a second, I was doing the things that other people wanted me to. I was chasing the likes and it was a really empty feeling truthfully, because you’re putting all this time and energy into it. Now I want to answer questions. What’s the greatest movie speech of all time, the greatest sports movie speech of all time? What is the greatest sports movie scene of all time? And if I think something’s dope, I think other people are gonna think it’s dope. So as long as I like it, I think other people might like it.
We hope you enjoyed getting to know Tanner – if you haven’t already, give him a follow! To meet the Fairy Godmother of business, @Maria_K_Tan, check out our last Deep Dive.