Only Thing That Can Save Super Bowl LX Is A Great Football Game To Make Us Forget The Other NFL Crap

SAN FRANCISCO – The NFL has for years been turning the Super Bowl into things it fundamentally isn't about and, as a result, now we've reached the moment when the league needs something to rescue its signature event: The Super Bowl needs a great game.

The NFL needs the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots to put on a great show on Super Bowl Sunday. Professional football needs to step up and serve its own interests with its own excitement. It needs electric plays and moments to be the game's power source again.

Football needs to save the Super Bowl.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 02: Sam Darnold #14 of the Seattle Seahawks and Drake Maye #10 of the New England Patriots look on during Super Bowl LX Opening Night at San Jose McEnery Convention Center on February 02, 2026 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Concerts Took Over Super Bowl

I say this because the NFL has lost its way with the Super Bowl. It used to be the league had the country's biggest game and understandably wanted to frame it with more pageantry, entertainment and drama.

But the marginal stuff grew into a monster. Slowly, the Super Bowl became more about other things.

• It became about the week of parties and radio row.
• It became about the commercials.
• The halftime show.
• The Taylor Swift and other celebrity reaction shots during the game.

The NFL was founded by football men (yes, men) who turned their game into a monolith. But somewhere along the way, the alpha males that made football the nation's most popular sport and the NFL its most dominant league, gave way to betas who wanted other things because, for them, the game wasn't enough.

So, we wake up this Super Bowl Sunday to a world where the slow creep away from the game and toward the other stuff means the Super Bowl halftime show draws higher ratings than the game.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Bad Bunny attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.  (Photo by Kevin Mazur/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

NFL Shrunk Game And Expanded Controversy

And at Super Bowl LX, the biggest star on that Levi's Stadium field will be Bad Bunny – the playa making more money and getting more attention than the players. 

The suits at the league office think this is good. They see this as a vehicle for expanding the Super Bowl tent.

But they don't see that in expanding the tent, they've shrunk the game. And now they've expanded the tent so much that some people are moving out.

Consider that this year's Super Bowl won't include the attendance of the President of the United States. It won't include the people tuning out at halftime because they don't speak Spanish. It won't include the people who tune in to a rival halftime program by Turning Point USA.

All of that because the NFL decided not just more people, but more controversial people needed to be added to its biggest show.

Opening Act Green Day Hates ICE

We already knew Bad Bunny was a controversial selection as a halftime show performer. It got to the point that, for the first time in memory, commissioner Roger Goodell had to publicly defend the choice. 

Multiple times.

Did you know Green Day is also working at Super Bowl LX? The band of elitist, socialist pukes will play during the opening ceremony prior to kickoff. They played at the Embarcadero on Friday night. And band frontman Billie Joe Armstrong decided to do what he does, and hate on a significant part of America.

"This goes out to all the ICE agents out there, wherever you are," Armstrong said over the music, "quit your sh---y-ass jobs.

"Quit that sh---y job you have because when this is over, and it will be over at some point in time, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Donald Trump, they're going to drop you like a bad f---ing habit."

So much for the Super Bowl being what Goodell called a platform to "unite people."

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 1:  Singers Janet Jackson and surprise guest Justin Timberlake perform during the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers at Reliant Stadium on February 1, 2004 in Houston, Texas.  At the end of the performance, Timberlake tore away a piece of Jackson's outfit.  (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)

Patriots, Seahawks Must Save The Super Bowl

The Super Bowl might have been big enough in the past to overcome inexplicable levels of stupidity. But most of those moments came from participants going AWOL, or getting arrested for soliciting an undercover cop, or suffering a drug relapse. We even had the musical act step in it occasionally, like when Justin Timberlake ripped off part of Janet Jackson's costume.

But none of those controversies offended fans long enough to force them to tune out.

It's different now. And the problem this game has is that it doesn't have obvious subplots – another NFL tool of late – to lure them back.

This game lacks generational quarterbacks like Brady, Manning and Mahomes. This game doesn't include dynasty teams people either love or love to hate. This game doesn't offer a referendum on the Tush Push or whether Joe Namath will be proven right for guaranteeing a win.

This Super Bowl's subplot? Whether ICE will indeed stay away on game day as the NFL promised during a press conference early in the week. 

So the game is all this Super Bowl has left to draw us in and make us stay.

The Patriots and Seahawks need to deliver to keep a Super Bowl that has gotten somewhat sideways from being completely derailed. It is once again, as it was at the dawn of Super Bowls, up to the game to save the event.