Real Football Upstages Lady Gaga and the Entertainment Machine in Super Bowl 50
A boring and poorly played game? Nonesense.
It was two classic defenses who played exceptionally well, humbling two offenses and one MVP and one 5-time MVP, AND an NFL that has tried to turn professional football and the Super Bowl into a glitzy scripted entertainment extravaganza that won’t offend family-oriented sponsors and be worthy of choreographed pop star dance offs.
Instead, they got football, not entertainment. Real football.
Out on that field between the whistles was real, old fashioned football where the only offensive TDs were accomplished by running backs making super human efforts to force their way through the kind of defenses that were common place in the 1970s, and only because their defense gave them a very short field.
The sound bite played over and over all week of someone saying “We gonna hit em in the mouth and make them feel like they never been hit like that before” became a reality, for at least one humbled offensive superman who had his wings clipped and couldn’t handle it, during the game or after.
It was two great defenses and perhaps one that deserves to be placed with the best ever, making two very good offenses look boring and poorly equipped. It was tense, for anyone with an emotional stake in the game, and with no offensive rhythm developing. But not for lack of trying.
It wasn’t pretty. But it was late in the 4th Quarter before it was truly decided, even if in the end both offenses failed to ignite any serious threat of breaking out.
Lady Gaga absolutely owned the National Anthem. The half time show was suitably not boring and shallow enough for mass appeal. The officials were pretty even-handed when it came to blatant fouls not called and iffy fouls that were called. The TV coverage was very poorly handled, especially at the end of the game and afterwards.
But the game itself? Seeing a defense so completely dominate the #1 offense gave me hope for football in the modern age where the rules are rigged to favor the offense every way possible.
While the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl it was football that was the big winner over those who want it to be some sort of expected spectacle.
That is why live athletic events on a champion level remains the best reality TV that has ever been or shall ever be. And why football is the true team sport that more than any other requires a team effort of so many minds and bodies working together, and every single one of them a possible goat or hero.