Peyton Manning’s Sloppy Seconds Super Bowl

Okay, people. It’s time again to talk about football. Like a dependable locust, arriving once every 12 months to devour all the snack food in your local grocery store, the Super Bowl arrived as predicted this past Sunday. And it was messy. (And before you tune out completely, don’t panic non-sports fans. I’m going to talk about the halftime show as well.)

Football! Now even 50-ier!

Before I get to the mess that actually unfolded on the field, here’s the obligatory background: This years’ teams were the Denver Broncos, led by quarterback and commercial star Peyton Manning, against the Carolina Panthers, led by one-man self-hype squad Cam Newton. If these names sound familiar to you, non-sports fan, it’s because Cam Newton got a lot of press for being the first person ever to win a Heisman trophy, a national championship, and be a first round draft pick in one year. Peyton Manning you know because there’s not a product on TV he hasn’t considering filming a promo for. Manning is also the oldest son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning and the older brother of current New York Giants QB Eli Manning. The Mannings are sort of like the Lannisters of the NFL.

Google Image searching "Lannisters and Mannings" actually returns a surprising number of results

Look, I could write a doctoral thesis on the oedipal dynamics of the Manning family. Suffice it to say the comparison to the Game of Thrones dynasty is important because at age 39, Peyton Manning is an old man in pro football terms and one seen as desperate to claim his place in the family glory. When he stepped on the field for this Super Bowl, he was officially the oldest QB ever to play in the game. He’s also been somewhat eclipsed by his younger brother who has won two Super Bowl rings. When Peyton played in the Super Bowl two years ago, it was seen as his last chance to win a second ring for himself so that he could retire on top. When the Broncos lost spectacularly that year to the upstart Seattle Seahawks, Peyton was on shaky ground. This game was his for real last last chance. And, like two years ago, he would be facing an upstart team fronted by a young, fresh face that had no qualms about strutting wherever he walked.

So what drama did we actually see in the game? Well, put it this way: I’ve had to consult a thesaurus when writing this to make sure I didn’t overuse the words “sloppy” and “messy.” And not to bury the lede anymore than I already have, but Denver eventually emerged as the winner. And though the score makes that win look decisive, let me show you exactly how not the case that was.

The thing is, Super Bowl 50 was a record breaker. Not in a good way. Denver made only 11 first downs and gained less than 200 total yards in the entire game. That’s the lowest for any Super Bowl winner ever. Over at the Carolina side, Cam Newton only had 18 of his 44 passes reach their targets, about a 44% success rate. Newton was also sacked (tackled to the ground by the opposing team before he could throw the ball) seven times, which ties him for first place in the number of sacks in the Super Bowl. Between the two teams there were 18 penalties for a total of 153 lost yards. Carolina had four turnovers (unintentionally losing the ball to the other team) and Denver had two. Both sides literally were tripping over themselves trying to run the ball. There was so much fumbling, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was actually a basketball game.

One of the more dignified examples of utterly shitting the bed, professionally speaking.

It was also a relatively low-scoring game. Denver won 24-10, which by pro football standards is a very modest end result. It also doesn’t really reflect the reality of how those scores were won. Denver’s first touchdown came quickly at the start of the game, but only because Carolina somehow fumbled their own ball and Denver recovered it in the Carolina end zone. Which is sort of like when Wile E. Coyote would try to kill the Road Runner with a bazooka only to have the bazooka blow up in his own face. You can’t exactly say that the Road Runner won that exchange.

Carolina itself didn’t even score until about a third of the way through the second quarter. Denver came into the game with the highest ranked defense in the country, but Carolina didn’t exactly make them use it much. This is doubly surprising given that Carolina had a remarkable season, coming almost out of nowhere. In fact, Carolina was favored over Denver going into the game, a prediction that probably made for some fun times in Vegas on Sunday night.  

It’s tempting to see an analogy here: the upstart, anti-establishment team comes roaring out of relative obscurity to capture the media’s attention, which initially ridicules said team before taking more note of them, predicting their demise, becomes dismayed when team continues to rise, and finally all but preparing the coronation before the older, establishment team delivers the crushing blow. Not sure where else I could have seen that story.

I'll tell you what, it would be YUGE.

I’ve just been reminded by Maggie Cats that I am obligated at this point to talk about Beyoncé and, specifically, that I must use the word “fierce.”

Look, I’m not convinced that Beyoncé is an actual person. I think she’s a next-generation hologram precision-designed in a corporate lab somewhere in Heidelberg to give the world something to care about. I’m also pretty sure that Beyoncé Corporate has formed a contractual agreement with the Internet that the Internet must at all times speak of Beyoncé^TM in only exaggerated, breathless terms. The Pepsi commercial halftime show kind of underscores that. In the parlance of the Internet, she “slayed.” Which, I guess? I mean, when your competition is Bruno Mars wearing a hefty bag and that one guy who Gwyneth Paltrow contentiously uncoupled from it’s not that hard to land, is it? I do think Beyoncé Corporate was smart to schedule their product’s performance literally hours after dropping another stealth song and video as a lead in to her World Tour/Adele Assassination Strategy. Well done, team! Take a long lunch today for coming up with that creative synergy.

For me, the halftime show is more notable for what happened afterwards. Which is to say, horrible people on the Internet continued to be horrible. Did you realize that all those psychedelic colors and outfits were actually secret number generators that were beaming stealth messages DIRECTLY INTO YOUR BRAIN and that Nobama knows about it and it’s all part of his plot to replace your guns with gay people? IT’S TRUE! Behold:

Your voters, America.

So, yeah. That was pretty much the halftime show.

As I say every year when I write this post, the Super Bowl is not about excellent sportsmanship or athletic prowess. It is about showmanship. The Super Bowl is event television where the only unforgivable sin is to be boring. In that sense, Super Bowl 50 lived up. Disheveled as it may have been, it was entertaining to watch the players messing all over themselves in the same way that it is entertaining to watch Japanese game shows, albeit with less crushing pain in this case. It also should give lots of support to struggling junior high school football players out there. “You see?” their parents will say to them, “It doesn’t matter if you fumbled into your own end zone. It was good enough for Cam Newton!”

Always next year?

It's Time For The Annual Super Bowl Post You Won't Read!

Welcome back, everyone!  Let me just say that this is the Super Bowl post that I didn’t want to write.  I was going to boycott the game this year due to the heinous, heinous I say, miscall during the final seconds of the first round playoff game between the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys that effectively stole the game away from Detroit, depriving my home team of their rightful chance to compete in the Big Game.  (I managed to come back around after almost the exact same call went the opposite direction for the Cowboys the following week, eliminating them and proving that he who lives by the pass interference call dies by the pass interference call.)  But then Deflategate happened and then it was the Seahawks defending their title against the Patriots, the douche-bro-est team in the country and, frankly, there just wasn’t a lot else on TV that Sunday night so I decided to watch.  Plus, I heard that Katy Perry was going to BURN Taylor Swift in the halftime show, and even though I don’t care much about either one of those people, I’ve always liked effigies.

Having watched the game, with its first 30 minutes mind-numbingly dull and its second an exercise in athletic what-the-fuckery, I’m not sure I made the right decision.  But I get ahead of myself. 

Go...home team? 

As I’ve said many times before, Super Bowls are all about spectacle.  They are not stunning examples of amazing athleticism or daring competition.  For that, we have the Olympics and Dance Moms.  It’s for that reason that the entire first half of the game was such a letdown.  This Super Bowl pitted the Seattle Seahawks, who won last year’s Super Bowl so decisively over Payton Manning and the Denver Broncos, against the powerhouse coach/quarterback/douche-nozzle combination of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. 

To give a sense of the match-up, going into the game both teams had exactly the same record (14-4) and throughout the first half played with almost identical statistics such that going into halftime, the score was tied.  And not even an energetic tie.  It was a relatively anemic 14-14.  Ho hum.  It was so boring that even Bob Costas had to come on just before the second half and deliver a three-minute commentary on how everyone needed to shut up on Twitter about how bored they were and remember that Super Bowls are often decided in the second half, they’re not meant to be exciting, and for God’s sake stop posting pictures of your food all the time.

Needs more pinkeye.

Then the second half started (actually, there was a halftime show in between, but I’ll get to that in a second) and things finally started to pick up. Seattle started putting points on the board, scoring 10 during the third quarter and shutting out New England.  Moving into the fourth, New England began to rebound, scoring a touchdown and putting themselves within three points of a tie.  Then Patriots Quarterback and human equivalent of crashing your uncle’s Porsche into the pond at the country club after you drank too much Boones Farm  Tom Brady threw a touchdown pass with two minute left in the game that put New England up by four points, 28-24. 

And now, finally, we had, as they say, a football game as Seattle took possession of the ball and drove it fearlessly down the field.  Things got tense for folk from the Emerald City when Seattle managed to somehow both fumble and catch a critical pass at the right time, almost losing out on their chance to score.  Nevertheless, they eventually found themselves on New England’s 1 yard line, literally three feet from victory.  And that’s when they shit the bed.

Not photshopped.  This is an actual picture showing what it looks like to fuck everything up.

Here’s the thing.  Seattle was on the 1 yard line.  They could have tripped and fell into the end zone and won the game as long as whoever tripped was holding the ball when he fell and managed to cross the line before his knee hit the ground.  But for some reason, Seattle called what has been referred to as the worst play call in the history of the Super Bowl.  They decided to pass.  And that pass was intercepted.  For those of you not familiar with what happens in football (and for the smaller number of you for whom that’s the case and still decided to read this post), that was a very bad thing for Seattle.  To make matters worse, Seattle has arguably the best running back in the country in Marshawn Lynch.  Hand Lynch the ball, and even if every New England player is ready to pounce on him he’s still going to cross the line and make it in.   Alas, none of that happened and Tom Brady, who is in fact that guy you knew in high school who started bum fights in the basement and never got in trouble for it because his dad was on the school board, got another thing aside from his super model wife and multimillion dollar per year job to brag about.

And yes, that’s all Seattle’s fault.  New England didn’t win; Seattle just lost spectacularly.  Seattle won the Super Bowl last year and they haven’t shut up about it since.  They’ve been on constant news reports talking up their greatness, which makes them the sports equivalent of that weird guy who once drunkenly made out with a model in a bar and now believes that it means he’s way hotter than he is.  Winning the Super Bowl once actually is not that difficult.  There are plenty of teams that win once and then either not again or not routinely.  Like so many things, it’s performance over time that counts.  Seattle wanted to be thought of as the new powerhouse and instead handed those accolades over to New England, the team that’s self-importance is so inflated it could float a zeppelin despite being a team that has employed, shall we say, questionable practices to get what it needs.

Factual?  No.  Representative?  Definitely.

What happens next, however, is what may be the most interesting thing yet.  The NFL entered this game in a state of turmoil due to the news-making events with Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Rice’s videotaped beating of his then fiancée, Miami Dolphins’ Richie Incognito’s racially-motivated harassment of his fellow players and staff members, and Arizona Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer beating his wife and son.  As such, it wasn’t a surprise to see many, many commercials in this Super Bowl that sounded more like “The More You Know” style PSAs about what it means to be a “real man” and encouraging men to maybe, like, not beat up women or something.  The last thing the NFL is looking for is more evidence that the ship that Commissioner Roger Goodell is sailing may not be so shipshape after all.  And now the league will have to contend with the evidence that the Super Bowl winning team, in theory the best team of the year, only got there because they cheated in an earlier game, deflating their own footballs to make their passes easier to throw and catch.

So yes, there are a lot of things that disappointed me about this year’s Super Bowl, but perhaps one of the biggest ones is the cruel twist of fate whereby one of the two competitors this year wasn’t New York if only for the reason that now I can’t legitimately make a Sharks vs. Jets joke.  This year, the Pepsi Halftime show gave America the public figure it has craved more than anyone else; a figure of style and beauty, of hope and inspiration, of talent and verve.  I refer, of course, to Left Shark.

No discussion of this year’s Super Bowl would be complete without considering the cultural icon that is Left Shark, seen here with his backup singer, a young woman who was not identified at press time:

 Since his emergence onto the national stage, Left Shark has inspired artwork, lawsuits challenging that artwork, historical retrospectives, and thrilling investigative journalism. There is at least a little bit of Left Shark in all of us, and yet none of us can every truly be Left Shark.  Except for Left Shark himself, of course.

No matter who plays in the game, Left Shark wins.  Left Shark always wins. 

#JeSuisLeftShark

The Superb Owl

Hey, did you know that Super Bowl XLVIII was last week? Yeah, neither did Denver, apparently.

Look, no one thought that this game was going to be some down-to-the-wire, last minute Hail Mary kind of game, but it’s safe to say that no one also expected…that. A game that should have at least been a bit of a give and take quickly descended into a lopsided three and a half-hour long slugfest where Denver could barely manage to find its footing and Seattle somehow came out looking like an actual pro football team. 

Some games are won not because the underdog team did better, but because the favored team just couldn’t pull it together. This was not one of those games. Right from the start, Seattle ran roughshod all over Denver.  It’s worth mentioning that Seattle were the Super Bowl virgins in this game – not only has the franchise never been to the Super Bowl, but no individual member of the current Seattle Seahawks roster has ever played on a team that’s competed in the Big Game. Compare that with Denver, the older more experienced team that has not only a franchise history but also individual players with several rings in their possession. In Elite parlance, “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

Ouch...

To wit: the final score was a crushing Seattle 43 to Denver 8. Denver couldn’t even manage to get on the board until the end of the third quarter, quite the feat considering that Denver’s quarterback is the much ballyhooed Peyton Manning, a man who by himself has five MVPs and a Super Bowl win under his belt coming into the game to say noting of the fact that his family is genetically incapable of producing failures. (See: Manning, Eli; Manning, Taryn; and Manning, Archie; to say nothing of Manning, Cooper.) And yet, somehow during Denver’s opening drive, we got this:

Whaaaaaa?

That was essentially the first play of the game - a miscue whereby the QB fails to connect with his own snap leading to a ball flying so far over his shoulder that the first score of the game came less than 12 seconds in and was a safety awarded to Seattle on Denver's drive. It’s fair to say that Denver never truly recovered. In fact, by the first play of the second half where Seattle, already significantly ahead, managed a return from its own territory to secure yet another touchdown, the majority of the country was ready to turn off the Super Bowl to see what was going on over at Downtown Abbey. You hear that, England? America has given up its national pastime in order to see what your turgid melodrama is up to. Clearly, we’ve ceded the culture war to you. Well done, Queen Elizabeth. Regardless of how bored viewers were with the rapidly descending thrill of the game, you have to at least credit Denver with trying to put together something that would qualify as entertaining. They finally managed to score at the end of the third quarter, thus by at least ensuring that they wouldn’t be completely shut out of a game against a bunch of neophytes led by a Quarterback that is barely old enough to buy beer legally.

"Mom says if throw for more than 100 yards I get an ice cream before we go home."

As I’ve written about several times before, the Super Bowl is far less about sports than it is about entertainment. It is to the regular season what Glee is to a Ken Burns documentary on PBS. That’s part of the reason why advertisers pay so much to get an overblown commercial on that airtime – it is, in theory at least, one of the most entertainment-driven nights on television of the year. The worst sin that a Super Bowl can commit is to be boring and, unfortunately, that’s what we got this year, though I suspect Seattle folk found that boredom more bearable than their Denver counterparts did. Still, the job of the Super Bowl is to keep people watching and to provide a active night of television. To quote a tweet from a friend of mine, “Sucks to be the company that bought a fourth quarter ad this year.”

As it is, the most entertaining thing about Super Bowl 48 is the aftermath. There are so many pundits at the “What It All Means For Peyton Manning” Club that they’re going to start running out of beer soon. If it’s a truism that the Super Bowl needs to be entertaining, it’s equally true that for all the love that we as a country generally have for the Manning family, there’s nothing we like more than watching giants fall.  Whether or not Super Bowl 48 marks the end of a long and celebrated career for Manning (personally I think we’ve still got him around for a few years, but he’s veering dangerously toward Brett Favre territory here), the most exciting thing to see right now in this Super Bowl aftermath is the talking about it. 

Careful, Peyton - the Manning family eats their own weak in order to purify their powers.