Adam Carolla Compares Bad Bunny Super Bowl Pick To Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney Fiasco

Comedian Adam Carolla says Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance could be a bigger problem for the NFL than the league realizes.

"I mean, a guy in a dress singing in Spanish some crappy reggaeton music I hate, and basically piss it off," Carolla said in an interview with the Daily Mail, referring to the NFL’s fan base.

Carolla said the league believes its longtime fans will continue watching the Super Bowl even if the halftime show turns them off.

"The NFL has figured out that their fans are their fans, and the old fans aren’t going anywhere, and we need to reach out to new fans," he said.

However, Carolla is not convinced that the league's calculation is correct, comparing the selection of Bad Bunny to Bud Light's partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

"You know, Bud Light thought they had their fans and they weren’t going anywhere, and Cracker Barrel thought they had their fans and they weren’t going anywhere," he explained. "I think it’s happened a time or two where companies and entities figured they had their fans locked in, let’s go with other fans."

Adam Carolla. (Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for Santa Barbara International Film Festival)

That is the exact point we argued last week. 

See, it was not until last February that the NFL regained support among Republican viewers it lost during the Colin Kaepernick kneeling controversy in 2016 and 2017. Those viewers changed the channel before (and kept it changed) and they could do so again.

For background, Bad Bunny is a vocal critic of President Trump and his policies. In a September 2025 interview, he explained his decision to avoid U.S. stops on his world tour.

"There was the issue of f****** ICE could be outside my concert," he told i-D magazine. "And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about."

HOLLYWOOD - Bad Bunny performs onstage at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

Moreover, Bad Bunny is not the only politically outspoken artist the NFL selected for the Super Bowl. The league also chose Green Day to perform during the pregame show. The punk rock band has been openly hostile toward Trump, recently changing song lyrics to reference Trump and ICE.

The NFL is naive to think these social justice musicians are not enough to turn viewers away. This past Sunday, ratings for the Grammy Awards dropped by more than 20 percent as artists, including Bad Bunny, protested ICE during their acceptance speeches.

So how could the league miss the potential backlash? Carolla believes commissioner Roger Goodell was likely unaware of Bad Bunny’s anti-Trump activism when the decision was made.

"Here’s my prop bet. Roger Goodell’s never heard of Bad Bunny before," Carolla said. "His exploratory committee brought it to him four months ago, right? There’s no way Roger Goodell knew who that was."

We agree.

Nonetheless, Goodell claimed this week that Bad Bunny "understands" the halftime show is "used to unite people" and "bring people together."

He may understand that, but that does not mean he will follow it.

Our prediction remains the same. Bad Bunny will cost the NFL popularity and spark a self-inflicted backlash from viewers who support law enforcement. The controversy is unnecessary and entirely avoidable.

As Carolla concluded, "A bunch of people would rather hear Ted Nugent" at halftime.