If the Commanders had made it I probably would have been rooting for them. The rivalry doesn’t feel as stronger to me, I can’t help but really like Jayden and the pain of living in that area for a couple of years with those fans has faded.
I’ve been a Packer fan for most of my life. I was way too young to watch them in Super Bowls I and III, but as an adult, I’ve seen them in three Super Bowls (two wins, one loss). In the '80s and early '90s, I was also a 49ers fan (mostly because of Joe Montana), and thus, I had a team to cheer for in several more Super Bowls, in that era.
But, I’ve also been a fan of football, in general, and until fairly recently, I could watch, and be entertained by, pretty much any NFL or college football game. So, even if I wasn’t a fan of either of the teams in a particular Super Bowl, I’d still watch it, in the same way that I’d watch the playoffs.
Also, after having enjoyed seeing the Packers win a Super Bowl (XXXI), if my team wasn’t going to be in the big game, I’d pull for the team that has either never won it, or hasn’t won it in a long time – I like the idea of fans of those teams finally being able to feel what I felt in 1997. Thus, this year, once the Packers were out of the playoffs, I wanted to see the Lions and/or the Bills make it to the Super Bowl: the Lions have never been there, and the Bills have never won it, going 0-for-4 in the early '90s.
However, in recent years, I’ve become less interested in the NFL, for a bunch of reasons: it’s now exceedingly over-commercialized and over-exposed, the league is now fully in bed with sports wagering companies, and the physical toll that playing the game takes on its players (especially, now, concussions and CTE) increasingly bothers me.
I wound up not even watching the game at all this year – not even for the commercials; it’s only the second time since 1972 that I didn’t watch at least part of the Super Bowl.
Oops, one too many Is. Super Bowl I and II.
I go with any rooting interest of close family or friends, the team farthest removed from a championship, or the team farther west, in that order.
Sometimes, if I really don’t have a preference ahead of time, things happen during a game that will cause me to start rooting for or against one of the teams.
My team (Green Bay Packers) is in the NFC so I tend to root for the NFC team. Wish there was more rivalry between the leagues, less or even no inter-league play except the Super Bowl, etc.
I have a [former] brother-in-law (who I get along with quite well otherwise) who is an obnoxious Chiefs fan. So rooting for the Eagles was easy.
I have another brother-in-law (who I hate but he doesn’t know it) who is an obnoxious Buccaneers fan.
So watching Super Bowl 55 was excruciating for me.
I tend to still root for the NFC team.
How would there be rivalry between teams that never play each other?
My general rule is to root for the team whose fan base has suffered the most.
Since I’m 71 that means I’ll probably never root for the Patriots again. On my old board their fans were huge whiners about being disliked during the Brady Black Era and I have enjoyed every defeat they’ve suffered since.
Living thousands of miles from the nearest major league franchise of any kind has put me in this spot for pretty much my entire life. In general, I’d pull for the team that would provide the more satisfying conclusion, but had to give it up because it never never never ever happened. 
The last Super Bowl I watched where I was happy about the result had either Steve Young or John Elway. That bad. Everything else has been neverending torment.
Bills in their fourth attempt, hey, they lead at halftime nope, it’s the Bills, nothing but fail and fail and fail and fail! Seahawks finally nail #2 after getting royally screwed over at least once and nobody caring? Nope, ridiculous dink pass at the 1, game over! Patriots complete a perfect season and CRUSH the 900-gigaton albatross of the '72 Dolphins and M****** M***** once and for all? Giants roll a hundred natural 20’s and complete the most ludicrous comeback drive in history, the one Super Bowl the Evil Empire absolutely had to have goes to ash. Falcons finally have their one miracle season after an eternity of agony, they’re up by four scores in the third quarter ha ha ha ha ha why did anyone think they have a chance. (I swear, future generations will consider The Curse of The Bambino a mild annoyance compared to what the Falcons faithful had to suffer through.) 49ers get #6 and end this America’s Team crap, NOPE! Bengals, ooh, looking good, NOPE! CardNOPE! Hey, how about Vikings vs. Bills just to see the world turn inside NOPE! How about the Lions making it once NOPE!!! look, I already know they’re not going to win, but just NOPE NOPE NOPE! And now UrinatingTree predicts the absolute worst case scenario as the Super Bowl matchup and is completely right for the first time ever!
So the heck with it. Total isolation this year. It looks like I made the right decision. I’m sticking with it. If there’s ever anything nice about the Super Bowl again, I’m sure I’ll hear about it somewhere. 
I’m talking a rivalry between the NFC and the AFC. With the Super Bowl being the only place the twain should meet.
Hypothetical scenario for last year’s NBA finals between Boston and Dallas: I hate Boston, but Dallas has Kyrie Irving. In the best-case scenario, Irving would have suffered a career-ending injury in the first minute of Game 1 but Dallas would still have somehow won the series. Alas, neither of those things happened.
Doubtful if that will ever happen, as interconference play began with the AFL-NFL merger in 1971, which created the two conferences. IIRC, that was part of the agreement when 3 teams moved from the NFL to the AFC (Steelers, Browns, Colts.)
Likewise, MLB began interleague play in 1997. That’s not going to change in either of our lifetimes, as it’s proven to be quite popular. (Yankees/Mets, Cardinals/Royals, etc.)
I try to, but I couldn’t find a reason to do it for this Super Bowl. Literally the last two teams I wanted to make it made it in. Well, that’s not true… It would have been worse if the Rams were playing the Chiefs, but then again if the Rams were in the Super Bowl it would be very easy to root for the Chiefs because I’d be rooting against the Rams. (I’m a Seahawks fan so the reason should be obvious.)
I really just didn’t care about either team, positively or negatively. So I barely watched any of it. I watched part of the second half, but mostly because my wife had it on TV to watch the ads. And the way the game played out, with the outcome being pretty much determined by halftime anyway, there didn’t seem to be much reason to pay attention. Blowouts are only fun if you’re a fan of the winning team (which is why Super Bowl 48 is my favorite game I’ve ever seen).
In retrospect, I could have rooted for the Chiefs to win because it would have been kind of cool to see the first threepeat in Super Bowl history, but oh well. And now I’m glad I didn’t because that would have been a bit letdown. 
The last time I didn’t care about a Super Bowl was Super Bowl 53, when it was the Rams and Patriots. They were both teams I loathed at the time, and it ended up being a low-scoring snoozer anyway.
Yeah? Well I don’t like it. Not one bit I don’t. It makes having 2 different leagues or conferences all but meaningless.
What are BEMs?
Two different conferences still is a huge deal. It means that only half of the teams you go up against are playoff rivals. When I see two teams and one is AFC and the other is NFC, I almost always root for the AFC team because every NFC loss is potentially helpful to my team (unless my team is the NFC team of course).
I’d hate the idea of conferences never playing each other in the regular season. It would have the potential to really create an imbalance between the conferences and hurts the parity that the league strives for. I also think it’s more interesting the more diversity you have with matchups.
I think they have it correct right now, where you face each team in your own division twice every year, and your own conference most of the time, but still see the other conference regularly. And your position among your division is most important for the postseason, while your position among your conference is almost as important. It’s very well-crafted.
I assume Bug-Eyed Monsters.
In any given season, only five of the seventeen regular-season games a team plays are against teams from the other conference, so it’s more like 70% of the games you play are against “playoff rivals” – and half of those games (35%) are specifically against your division rivals.
Sorry, I worded that clumsily. I meant to say that only half of all teams in the NFL (that you might face in the regular season) are playoff rivals, not that half of the teams you will face will be.
Makes sense!
Right, exactly. That’s not how rivalries work. You can’t have a rivalry between teams that don’t play each other.
Bug-eyed monsters, an old sci-fi term for aliens.