How I Watch With TikTok’s Rachael and Tom Sullivan, Who Host Meals for College Students on NFL Sundays

Tom and Rachael Sullivan have “gone viral” quite a few times in the past two years.

First, the couple “adopted” a student from nearby NC State named Kevin, which grew into them hosting hundreds of college students for meals. Then, they blew up again after Rachael documented her discovery of her husband’s secret Instagram account called @mealssheeats—he had documented everything he cooked for her to help regulate her hormones as she managed her PCOS, a condition that can affect fertility in women. More recently, after announcing they were pregnant, Rachael and Tom posted weekly videos of him cooking different meals, each time incorporating a food that matched the size of the baby at the time.

Now that their daughter Sutton has been born, Rachael and Tom have officially revamped their college kid meals. September marked their first one of the school year, and they aren’t planning to slow down anytime soon. They host these meals each Sunday, and with a TV in nearly every room in their house, they say, it makes for a fun day of NFL game-watching.

SI: What’s your favorite NFL team? Walk us through your journey to becoming a fan.

TS: It’s the Bears… We're both from Chicago. I played college football at the University of Illinois, and I have some of my old teammates who played for the Bears. Since Sutton wasn’t born in Chicago, we decided that…

RS: When she can crawl, we’re going to lay out all of the helmets and let her pick her own team.

TS: We’re like, Sutton looks good in Carolina blue, so…

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SI: You wake up on a Sunday morning: What’s the first thing you’re doing?

TS: If it's for a college meal, I’m usually up through the night, I kind of nap.

RS: Well you’re up by like 6 a.m.

TS: Between 4 and 6 a.m., depending. Our college meals start at 1 p.m. ET, so kickoff time, and go through 3 p.m. So I'm wrapping up food for over 100 people that morning. This [first] Sunday, I got up early to start the ribs, so we started smoking ribs, and then I marinated chicken and started brining the salmon… Wings are a big one. Definitely on Sundays, I like to do things on the smoker because you can kind of just throw it on and forget about it.

RS: It was nice because the Bears [in Week 1] had the night game, so he had all day to plan out what he was going to make.

SI: Is that your go-to snack or meal on game day? Wings?

TS: It depends: If it's a night game, it's ribs, because then I can take six to eight hours. But yeah, wings for the noon games.

SI: Do you have any interesting rituals or superstitions you go through on gameday?

TS: With the Bears, the funny one we have is with Grandpa Ed [Rachael’s dad]—whenever the Bears do something good, it’s typically when he’s not in the room.

RS: So he’ll literally stay out of the room or something, for the rest of the game.

TS: Like as they rally, or if we need them to do good, he’ll go in a different room and be like, Are they doing it yet?

SI: What are you usually wearing to watch? Is it a piece of team gear, or something else?

TS: I used to always wear my Butkus, or my 89 jersey. I was number 89 in college. I’d wear that, and [Rachael would] wear mine.

RS: We had the matching ones.

SI: And do you have any football outfits for Sutton yet?

RS: Oh yeah. Because until she picks her own team, we have to do something for now. Option No. 1 says, Shh… I’m watching the game with dad. Option No. 2 is a football.

TS: Her favorite hold I do is when I hold her like a football, she just passes out. So she’ll just be my little football.

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SI: So are you always watching at home now, or do you ever head somewhere else to watch?

TS: Yeah, so when you walk into our place on the right is a big screen, and then on the left is a sunroom and that's where students go to sign up, and then all the Tupperware is in there and there's another TV in there.

RS: And there's another couch.

TS: So the TV’s going in there with like the NFL Sunday Ticket or something like that. And then RedZone in the main room, and then in the kitchen, we'll have another, whatever somebody wants to switch on.

SI: Who are you usually watching a game with?

TS: There's always like groups of people sitting around, and they're from all over, you know, because it's college. And they all have different teams. I remember one student didn't really know much about football, and so another was telling her some of the rules and how it goes… Like, it's just such an icebreaker. I feel like that's always been my favorite thing about sports is that you don't have to care about football—it's just a way to get people together. And then for us, it's like, oh, we'll add food. So it’s perfect.

SI: What’s your favorite memory of watching the Bears play?

TS: Rachael won tickets. And they were sideline tickets. And it was against the Rams, at the end of the year, three years ago, and the Rams were a heavy favorite. And [the Bears] beat the Rams, and that was like a big turning point. I forget the time of the year. I know it was cold. But it was also cool, because when we were on the sideline, one of my old coaches was with the Rams and saw me.

RS: So he came over. But that was my first ever Bears game.

SI: What’s the craziest thing you would do to guarantee the Bears win a Super Bowl this year?

TS: Our next kid’s first name would be Fields, for Justin Fields.

RS: I like Bears more than Fields.

TS: If it’s a boy, but if it’s a girl…

RS: Oh yeah, you’re right. We’ll do Fields.

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