The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will face off in Super Bowl LIX, a rematch from two seasons ago, on Feb. 9 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

The game is expected to be watched by more than 120 million people and features many intriguing storylines as the Chiefs, led by superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes, seek to become the first team to win the Super Bowl three years in a row.

How can you make this year’s Super Bowl relevant to your curriculum?

Whether debating football-related controversies, making predictions, analyzing ads, writing descriptions, understanding data and statistics, or learning about head trauma, we have ideas for using The New York Times and The Learning Network to help you do just that.

How do you teach the Super Bowl? Let us know in the comment section, or by submitting a Reader Idea.

Map N.F.L. History: In 2019, the N.F.L. celebrated it’s 100th birthday. Read this essay that looks back at what has changed and what has remained the same over the past century.

Then, create a visual timeline that maps the history of the league. You might choose to represent the sport as a whole or do your own research and visualize one aspect of it, like the greatest players of all time, the changes to shoulder pads, or the growth of the passing game.

Study your timeline to see what patterns emerge. How has the game evolved? What has remained constant? What trends can you predict for the future?

Learn About Women in Football: Fifteen female coaches were on N.F.L. staffs this season. And two women were coaches for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2021 Super Bowl, an important milestone in the N.F.L.’s gender diversity efforts, Gillian R. Brassil and Kevin Draper write in “These Women Were N.F.L. ‘Firsts.’ They’re Eager for Company.”

“What is really going to excite me is when this is no longer aberrational or when this is no longer something that’s noteworthy,” said Amy Trask, who in 1997 became the Oakland Raiders’ chief executive and the first woman of that rank in the N.F.L.

Here are some football- and sports-related questions we’ve asked as part of our Student Opinion feature:

Examine the Role of Politics in Sports: Political activism and protests by athletes are nothing new. Muhammad Ali publicly criticized the Vietnam War. John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised fists as symbols of “Black power” during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to raise awareness of racial injustice and brutality toward African-American people at the hands of the police. The W.N.B.A. has long been a hotbed of political activity.

But following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, activism in sports exploded. N.B.A. players wore jerseys emblazoned with messages of social justice. The W.N.B.A. dedicated its 2020 season to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by the police. Tennis champion Naomi Osaka wore masks to the court bearing the names of Black victims of violence. The civil unrest even prompted an unusual outpouring from players, coaches and officials in the N.F.L., which has wrestled publicly with issues of race and racism more than other leagues.

What are your students’ thoughts about political activism in sports? Do they think football, and the Super Bowl, should be apolitical, or do they think athletes should be free to express their political beliefs and even make protests? Do athletes, in fact, have a responsibility to use their platform to advocate for justice? Can these kinds of gestures actually make a difference?

Check out these related Learning Network resources to help you start the discussion or take it further:

Assess the State of the Game: In 2019, The New York Times created a six-part series looking at the state of the game, from a small town school board debating whether to allow 13-year-olds to play tackle football to a military base in Japan where football is the vital connection to home.

Have students read one or more of the articles in the series and assess the state of the game: Is football in trouble? Or do you think it will continue to be America’s favorite sport and past time?

Learn About Leadership: Use sports to help students think about leadership with our Super Bowl lesson plan from 2001, in which students answered questions like “Why do you think the success of a sports team has such an impact on the city it represents?” and “What is ‘morale’ and what do you think leaders can do to ‘boost’ it?”

You can update it with this 2020 article, “Pete Carroll Wants to Change Your Life,” about the Seattle Seahawks coach who “insists that coaching should be about something bigger than wins and losses — helping people be better at life.”

What kind of coaching do you respond to best? Why? What lessons can sports teach us about life in general?

Discover a High School Team Breaking Stereotypes: Do you like stories about underdogs, long shots or unsung heroes — athletes and teams that break barriers and defy the odds? Teach with our lesson plan “Deaf Football Team Takes California by Storm,” about a high school team that broke the stereotype that deafness is something to overcome. Then discuss: What are the skills and qualities — athletic, social and emotional — that a team needs to come together as a unit and win?

Create Museum Exhibits: Have students reflect on the qualities that make exceptional football players, or athletes of any kind, then design museum exhibits celebrating their achievements, using our lesson plan The Sporting Life.

Language Arts, Media Studies and Visual Arts

Make an Argument: Should parents let their children play football? What rules in the game would you change and why? Who is the G.O.A.T. (no, not those cute animals with the horns and the beard — the Greatest of All Time)? And, should Patrick Mahomes be considered the G.O.A.T. if he wins a third straight Super Bowl this year?

The Super Bowl is a great opportunity to harness your students’ passion for the sport into a writing or debate activity. Our lesson plan “Playing to Win: Using Sports to Develop Evidence-Based Arguments” offers dozens of articles, questions and exercises to help your students craft and hone a bulletproof argument.

Flex Those Descriptive Writing Muscles: “The _________ won the game against the_________.” How do sports reporters reinvent that simple sentence in interesting ways every day?

In “The Power and Glory of Sportswriting,” Nicholas Dawidoff writes:

When writing about sports, you have to learn to navigate an odd literary predicament: Your audience often already knows the outcome before it starts reading. An editor at Sports Illustrated once advised me that the art of the work rested in telling people who already know what happened a story so compelling that they forget everything and, at the end, wish they’d been there.

Use sports writing as a model for descriptive writing with our lesson “Getting in the Game” and an annotated article by Alan Blinder, a Times sports reporter, who takes us behind the scenes of his reporting and writing process for an article on college football signing day. Then challenge your students to write a lively paragraph (or more!) that reports on some aspect of this year’s Super Bowl.

Poetry at the Super Bowl: Four years ago, for the first time ever, there was poetry at football’s biggest game. The poet Amanda Gorman, who wowed Americans at President Biden’s inauguration when she recited her poem “The Hill We Climb,” performed at the Super Bowl LV preshow.

Invite your students to learn more about Ms. Gorman and analyze her poem using our lesson plan. Do your students think poetry should have a place in future Super Bowls?

Critique the Ads: The Super Bowl is the biggest day of the year for advertising, especially now when viewers can easily skip or opt out of commercials altogether.

Do your students realize how much they are marketed to in general? Super Bowl commercials are clear, but Instagram ads can be sneaky. Do they know how to spot them?

Use the questions from our lesson plan on Super Bowl ads or these five essential critical media literacy questions from Common Sense Education to have students analyze and critique the spots that will air on Feb. 12 specifically, or those they see online leading up to the game.

Here’s an example of what this analysis can look like in the real world: Reviews of the notable ads from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020. What kinds of trends do students notice in the ads this year?

Finally, you might consult this lesson plan at MiddleWeb for more ideas on teaching media literacy through Super Bowl ads.

Imagine Powerful P.S.A.s: In 2015, the N.F.L. aired a public service announcement during the Super Bowl that addressed domestic violence and sexual abuse. As a part of its “Inspire Change” initiative, it has debuted several ads that address police violence. In one, which ran during the N.F.C. and A.F.C. Championship games, the former player Anquan Boldin tells the story of his cousin, Corey Jones, who was shot and killed by a police officer.

Ask students what they think about these kinds of issue-based ads and public service announcements. What commercial would they like to see during the Super Bowl this year, given the enormous audience that message would reach?

Try a Super Bowl-related Art Project: In 2019, the sportswriter Benjamin Hoffman and the illustrator Chris Morris teamed up to create this illustrated guide to the N.F.L. playoffs. Create your own guide for the 2022 Super Bowl by summarizing the playoff games that led to the Bengals-Rams matchup and pairing them with an original drawing.

Want more ideas for visual arts pieces using The New York Times? You can adapt any of the projects in this lesson plan to make them Super Bowl-themed. Like, making a paper trail through Super Bowl coverage, illustrating a Super Bowl snack recipe, creating an op-art illustration based on a football-related Opinion piece, or putting together a mixed media collage to represent a favorite player.

Propose Your Dream Halftime Show: Kendrick Lamar will perform at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. Last year, a pregnant Rihanna performed a dozen of her hits in a 13-minute fashion-filled extravaganza. In previous years, musical superstars Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé have headlined. Learn more about the history of the halftime show here and here. Then, propose your dream show.

Create Logo Art: Or, try our design lesson, based on a slide show of artist-created “alternative logos” from 2009, about how Super Bowl art has evolved over time. You can find all of the official Super Bowl logos, from Super Bowl I to Super Bowl LVII, here.

Science, Technology and Health

Understand Football and Head Trauma: The brain trauma sustained in football and other contact sports is now linked to long-term cognitive impairment, including memory loss, confusion, depression and dementia.

What is the impact of a single concussion? What is the long-term impact of brain trauma? What is the degenerative brain disease C.T.E.? What is the impact of concussions on youths? How do concussions affect athletes’ short- and long-term physical and mental health? What is the role of equipment in brain trauma? Can equipment, such as helmet caps, reduce concussions or does it give players a false sense of security, therefore making the problem worse?

You can have your students do their own research into any of these questions. Or, see our 2011 lesson plan on brain trauma. Based on what they learn, they might weigh in on our related Student Opinion question or Picture Prompt, which both pose the question: Is tackle football too dangerous for young people to play?

It’s Not Just Head Injuries: Over the course of an N.F.L. season, players’ feet and hands take a beating on nearly every snap. Fingers are jammed, toes are stepped on, ankles are twisted, and nails are broken. Students can explore this Times interactive detailing the physical toll on athletes. Then, they might create their own infographic informing others on the wear and tear of a single season.

What’s With Football and the Flu?: Why does attending a Super Bowl party give you a higher risk of getting the flu? This Upshot article explains:

According to a new study published in the American Journal of Health Economics, the death rate from the flu is appreciably higher among those whose home team makes it to the Super Bowl.

This seemingly puzzling finding actually makes some sense. The game occurs during the heart of flu season and is the reason for the mingling at Super Bowl parties. And fans with their team in the game are probably more likely to attend one.

For many ideas about teaching about the flu and how to avoid it, visit this lesson plan.

Discover the Science of Sports Equipment and Technology: Ever wonder how those N.F.L. footballs are made? What about those super sticky gloves receivers like Odell Beckham Jr. use to make those dazzling one-handed catches? Or why a perfect spiral football pass doesn’t break the laws of physics? Three recent lessons have the answers:

In this Film Club lesson, students learn how footballs are made in a short documentary that takes viewers inside a Wilson football factory in Ada, Ohio, the source of the N.F.L.’s handmade footballs.

In this lesson, students read about how sticky gloves have changed football and debate whether athletes should be able to use technology to improve their performance.

And in this lesson, students learn about the forces behind a quarterback’s pass and consider how they can apply what they learn to improve their own spiral.

Pose and Answer Sports-Related Science, Technology and Health Questions: Do heart attack rates rise during the Super Bowl? Have your students brainstorm a list of sports-related science, health and technology questions. They can post their responses to our writing prompt, “What Questions Do You Have About How the World Works?”

Learn Football Anatomy: Try our lesson on the anatomy and physiology of the muscular system, the skeletal system and connective tissue and have students research joints in the body.

Play the Odds. Which team will win Super Bowl LIX? By how much?

In 2018, the Supreme Court lifted a federal ban on sports betting. The N.F.L. has since embraced the gambling industry and forged partnerships reportedly worth nearly $1 billion over five years with sports betting companies.

Find out the odds for the Chiefs-Eagles matchup here.

(You can also find the odds for game M.V.P. as well as prop bets like, “Will a player or coach cry during the national anthem?” and “Will Travis Kelce propose to Taylor Swift?”)

In this 2014 piece, Joe Drape profiles the so-called “oddsmakers” for football’s biggest game:

It is a title bestowed on those who put out point spreads, or lines, on scores of sporting contests all year round, but have a turn in the mainstream spotlight only once a year when the Super Bowl transforms America into a coast-to-coast sports book. They are the men — and they are almost all men — who decide the numbers and proposition bets for football’s biggest game, affecting everything from office pools to bets made with neighborhood bookies and organized crime syndicates.

How do these oddsmakers decide the numbers and proposition bets for big games like the Super Bowl? Why do the sports books nearly always end up ahead? What is “square money” and why is it that “the flood of square money that inundates the Super Bowl makes the game one of the easiest lines of the year for oddsmakers”? Why, in a world where algorithms rule and quants are celebrated, does putting out a number remain “an old-school endeavor”? Have students read the rest of the article to answer these questions and consider if, when and how betting on the Super Bowl is worth it.

Use Data and Statistics to Play Fantasy Football: In our lesson plan, “Put Me In, Coach! Getting in the Quantitative Game with Fantasy Football,” students use statistical analyses and quantitative evaluations to get the edge in fantasy football. By looking at data, measuring matchups and making projections, students put their analytic skills to the test.

Determine Football “Greatness” — Mathematically: Use sports statistics to create graphs via this lesson, in which students explore both the objective and subjective criteria used to determine the “greatness” of a person or team. Students then compare the statistics and argue the need for other criteria to adequately judge whether a person or team is “the best” in their profession.

Analyze a Sports Graph: In a 2020 edition of our What’s Going on in This Graph? series, we invite students to analyze a graph of common injuries in high school sports, including football. We ask them three questions:

• What do you notice? If you make a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim.

• What do you wonder? What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the graph?

After they study the graph, have them make some predictions about the future of football: Based on the information in the graph, what do they think will be the state of the sport in five, 10 or 20 years? Will youth participation rates continue to decline? Do they think football will remain America’s most popular sport? Then, they can read the article, “Inside Football’s Campaign to Save the Game” to find out more information.

You can use this three-question protocol with any football-related graphs from The Times. Here are a few to get you started:

And if you want to do more with sports and infographics, you might like our 2014 list “Interpreting the Data: 10 Ways to Teach Math and More Using Infographics.”

Plot Super Bowl Data: Or, perhaps students want to collect Super Bowl data and use it to create and analyze their own graphs. Our lesson plan “Playing Smart With Data: Using Sports Analytics to Teach Math” can help.

Use Probability to Estimate the Chances of Your Favorite Team Making the Playoffs: We already know what teams are in this year’s Super Bowl, but next season, use our lesson, “Run the Numbers: Exploring the Math Behind Any N.F.L. Team’s Playoff Chances,” to predict who will make the postseason.

Use Statistics to Construct Arguments: Caroline Doughty, a second grade teacher in Alexandria City, Va., wrote to us to tell us about how she’s teaching the Super Bowl:

This year, I am integrating Super Bowl statistics into my math and writing blocks. In math, we are comparing numbers (touchdowns, yardage, years of experience) and adding together scores. After analyzing the statistics, students are creating arguments for who they think will win and providing evidence to back up their opinions. Then, students will try to persuade others. Lastly, each student will vote on who they think will win and we will graph the results.

I try to incorporate sports into my instruction as much as I can. Especially in math, it provides real life data to work with and the kids love it.