Life 2 Sports
Football

Counting all things that made NFL’s Super Bowl a mess

Feb. 16, 2023
Counting all things that made NFL’s Super Bowl a mess

Roger Goodell’s smug habit of placing pandering ahead of the best interests of football and its fans doesn’t take days off for the Super Bowl. Nearly all games end with good questions to which there are no logical answers.

From Super Bowl Sunday:

Consider that the game was played in a fair-weather climate to best guarantee a championship unaffected by foul weather. Then consider it was played on a field that was in no condition to hold an Everglades Easter egg hunt. The integrity of the Super Bowl, even before kickoff, was predicated on who would lose their footing, where and when.

But this is consistent with Goodell Era neglect as playing conditions, especially at night in Arctic weather, is of no foresightful concern. The only essential matter is that the perimeters of NFL fields are stenciled with large messages reminding TV viewers that our racist ways must change.

Fox’s strongest moments during the telecast came when highlighting in show-and-tells the playing field’s inexcusably rotten condition.

For some now-standard mindlessly uncivil reason, Goodell and the media, led by TV, has determined that KC TE Travis Kelce, in his role as a loudmouthed offspring of Vince McMahon, is the new coolest dude the NFL can produce. That he has ascended to “The Voice” of the NFL is sad yet meets with modern diminished standards.

Kelce’s unchallenged postgame rant in which he hollered that the Chiefs were season-long victims of disrespect made zero sense as that plainly was not the case.

Or is it that Kelce is well aware that class and dignity stoke antipathy in promo and commercial-makers?

If the NFL’s Super Bowl goal, with Fox’s pregame and in-game assistance, was to present another all-day video lecture that emphasized oppressed African Americans against its oppressors, white Americans, it succeeded.

Despite a large end zone message that “It Takes All Of Us” and that we “End Racism,” the NFL again chose to promote real, imagined and wishful racial divide with an extravagant presentation of the black national anthem — as segregationist as having white and black seating sections.

But such is Goodell’s pandering, sense of racial progress and progressivism.

Heck, the game was sprayed with cheap, transparent public relations perfumes including the military “All Women Flyover.” The military’s “All Binary Flyover” is coming.

This one’s tough to write, but unmitigated baloney is tough to digest.

The continued canonization of KC coach Andy Reid as the team’s father-figure, mentor, personal problem-solver and guiding light was more standardized media nonsense.

Say nothing before ignoring hard truths.

Hard truths: In 2012 Reid lost his oldest son, Garrett, to a heroin overdose. Another son, Britt, one of Reid’s coaches, recently was sentenced to three years in prison for leaving two children injured, one in a coma, in a 2021 DUI in which he’d been drinking and on a prescription drug. He crashed into two parked cars.

In 2007 Britt and Garrett were sentenced to eight-23 months for what a Pennsylvania judge characterized as running a “drug emporium” out of the Reid home.

Also in 2007, Britt was in a road-rage episode in which he allegedly pointed a gun at a man. A lawsuit settled the case out of court.

Again, say nothing before hitting us — over and over, and on all of the NFL networks — with the same bag of horse dung.

The media’s critical acclaim bestowed on Fox analyst Greg Olsen, before and after the game, was befuddling, and I’m not easily fuddled.

While Olsen seemed to cut back on his endless, needless and often redundant speeches, he still left us looking at the TV, our heads tilted, like that old RCA radio dog. As Philly drove for the first score, Olsen emphasized the value of “playing with the lead,” which could mean that it’s better to be winning than losing.

And he identified another “first-down run with his legs,” while several plays were made as the result “of a process” — as opposed to play?

An obvious holding call as “He’s clearly engaged, there.” Huh? And he declared, “Every ball that winds up in Patrick Mahomes’ hands, the better for the Kansas City Chiefs,” thus Olsen was in favor of snapping the ball to KC’s QB.

Worthwhile analysis escaped him and Kevin Burkhardt, especially when a large, silly graphic noted that Philly had a large time-of-possession advantage. That was when to say, “But KC scored on a Philly fumble, thus Philly had consecutive possessions.”

As has become all-too predictable, the halftime show, as per Roger Goodell’s pandering, hypocritical invites, was hideously inappropriate for any sports event run by those with self-respect.

Not that Goodell has the courage to say, “I’m Roger Goodell and I approved this message,” but Rihanna opened by fingering her vagina then sniffing her fingers before she was surrounded by dozens of white-hooded male dancers in the role of sperm.

But Goodell knew what she was about heading in — another mark of his corrosive leadership.

Nearly as reprehensible was the response of national media. Monday morning, for example, the four NBC “Today Show” hosts claimed Rihanna was magnificent. Their words were attached to a short video that carefully excluded her two dalliances with her vagina — as a matter of taste and self-censorship, of course.

And no mention that she sang “Bitch Better Have My Money,” another culture-enhancer that gathered dubious plaudits instead of repudiation. Or can you go forward by running backward?

With such selectively edited and spoken reporting the NBC foursome could applaud what they otherwise would not support.

The replay rule was, as usual, employed in a totally unintended manner, thus affecting every succeeding play.

Philly QB Jalen Hurts hit WR DeVonta Smith with a sideline pass for a 35-yard gain. A replay challenge flag followed.

During the examination, Fox’s Mike Pereira, the former head of NFL officials, observed that Smith had complied with every catch and feet standard, thus a complete pass. Pereira spoke as if this were a waste of a challenge and time, as it was an obvious completion.

Ruling: Incomplete pass.

The in-game commercial that left me confused included player-hugging, NFL shill and Fox “serious broadcast journalist” Erin Andrews banging the drums for NFL women’s flag football. Andrews, you’ll recall, was the victim of a hotel stalker/peeping Tom.

In Sunday’s ad a woman flag-footballer is chased here, there and everywhere, including what appeared to be a hotel room in which she was pursued by two males who stare into the room’s peephole. Again, Andrews appeared in that ad.

Another ad starred Serena Williams, still regarded by marketing folks as a woman all of America unconditionally loves when it’s my experience that it’s hard to find more than a couple of people who even like her.

Finally, will Fox ever get around to revealing just who won “Terry Bradshaw’s $1 Million”? The winner of such a prize, especially after so much hype, should not go unannounced.


Scroll to Top