To borrow from FDR, “and so my friends — and you are my friends” — Super Bowl Sunday is here, and with it arrives the same now old modern garbage: a halftime entertainment extravaganza as approved by sports’ highest paid full-time phony, Roger Goodell, the man who reminds us that there are haves and have-yachts.
Again, during this Super Bowl, what Goodell has deemed as beneath him and his family, he has determined as perfect for you and yours.
So, as Goodell, who prior to the Super Bowl last year turned down the opportunity to recite just the titles of Snoop Dogg songs — frequently arrested Snoop Dogg was among the NFL’s headline performers — as they’re too raunchy for a man in his lofty position, might as well have declared, “On with the show!”
And the standard rap music proceeded: the crotch-grabbing, N-word-spewing, women-degrading, vulgar and violent messaging that promotes and sustains every negative stereotype of black America was reprised — no better idea from Goodell and his appointed minister of social values, Jay-Z.
And it remains a classified mystery as to which songs special star Rihanna will perform at halftime of what was designed to be the NFL championship until Goodell replaced Up With People with Off With Clothes.
Not that it bothers Goodell, but Rihanna’s artistry has been described by the Daily Mail, which chose not to print her lyrics as a matter of can’t-go-that-far dignity, as “overtly sexual sado-masochstic” as witnessed in her “bondage inspired videos.” Besides the N-word, she has even added the C-word to her vocabulary, the worst of sexual slurs spoken of women.
But Goodell considers her perfect for a Sunday evening halftime concert watched by the largest family audience every year. Goodell feels that nothing reflects better on the NFL. Its players and his legacy.
So what should Rihanna sing?
Perhaps she’ll choose “Sex With Me.” Here goes:
“You know I got the sauce
“You know I’m saucy
“And it’s always wet, a bitch never ever had to use lip gloss on it …”
Before the vulgar parts are sung.
Like that one, Roger. No? Then how about “No Love Allowed.” The refrain in that one is “N—a, is you blind?”
Go ahead, you, Mrs. Goodell and the Goodell kids sing along, dance along.
Naturally, you don’t become the sports world’s biggest phony (a reported $64 million per year) without being an unmitigated hypocrite, and Goodell has long had that covered, starting with his solemn, soulful belief — his published conviction — that legalized gambling on NFL games would be harmful to the integrity of the sport and to communities as a whole.
Of course, gambling enterprises now line up to purchase the NFL’s logo and certification, providing the NFL with its cut of the losses sustained by NFL fans — suckers — who are encouraged to get rich by investing their money in a business predicated on investors losing their money.
Then there was another money-grab lie, the one about how “PSLs are good investments.” And his TV money-based lie to Packers ticket-holders that, “It’s all about our fans” — before “flexing” winter games to prime time in arctic conditions.
And there’s Goodell’s ongoing social messaging, his hollow public relations, made-for-TV plan to surround NFL fields and decorate helmets with “End Racism,” “Choose Love,” “Inspire Change” and “It Takes All of Us.”
That doesn’t quite rhyme with Goodell’s invites to N-word-spewing rappers Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and Travis Scott, among others, to entertain before the NFL’s largest audience.
Goodell’s rank hypocrisy — aided by a silent media — is such that he’d actually exploit the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
Prior to the kickoff of Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, the NFL made Dr. King its hallowed honoree.
Goodell was seen in a video soberly visiting Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was ordained. It’s now a National Historic Landmark. King’s extraordinary messages, missions, marches and martyrdom were cited as representative of the NFL’s full and active accord. Dr. King’s daughter conducted the pregame coin flip.
But soon Goodell’s halftime show began, and its content was in full defiance of everything Dr. King lived and died for, starting with rap music’s resurrection of the N-word — as backward-pointing, vulgar, N-word-spewing, women-objectifying rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi took the stage.
The hypocrisy was and remains staggering.
Sunday evening, Goodell is proud to present Rihanna, her artistry, fame and fortune reliant on coarse language in celebration of female and racial sexual degradation. That’s how the NFL, under Goodell, runs the NFL’s championship game.
He’d have it no other way.
Another season ends with same old cliffhangers
The way things are going this season …
It’s impossible to think that Super Bowl LVII won’t be decided, to some large degree, by a totally unintended use of the ever-changing replay rule.
Empirical wisdom also tells us that the game will, to some large degree, be affected and afflicted by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty — as mindless, me-first play has become as common as punts.
And a long, game-changing run or pass will be caused by a defender’s decision to try to blast the ballcarrier into the hospital rather than just tackle him. There’s also a 50-50 chance that the team that performs the most post-play celebrations will lose the game.
And then another season will end without fundamental knowledge of when “essential” red-zone possessions begin, first down through fourth, and whether first-and-goal from the 1 is the same as third-down-and-10 from the 19.
Keep eye on Dallas
Not that the Chiefs are unaware of it, but a play that has made the Eagles’ offense potent of late has been the over-the-middle delayed pass, Jalen Hurts to tight end Dallas Goedert.
Goedert has become accomplished at delaying his departure by throwing or faking a block toward the outside, then angling inside the hash marks. I’d glance toward Goedert before every Philly snap, especially when he’s tight to the offensive line.
How will the Eagles’ D stop Patrick Mahomes to TE Travis Kelce? Let me get back to you on that.
Your Super Bowl choices: Greg “Moose II” Olsen on Fox or Hollerin’ Kevin Harlan on Westwood One Radio. May I suggest the cheese platter?
Prop bet: Over/Under for times Fox’s former NFL ref Mike Pereira will be summoned to try to figure out a call, a replay review stoppage or what the heck is going on down there is 5.5.
FS1’s Colin Cowherd is expected to appear twice during Fox’s all-day pregame in order to totally contradict the first “facts” he spoke.
As an added Super Bowl attraction, Jimmy Dolan has been selected to throw out the first lawyer.
