Last night’s Super Bowl was a real clunker. Anyone who watched the game could tell you that. It was sloppy, low-scoring, and boring to the point where even soccer fans were clowning American football:
The game was made even less interesting by the lack of hype leading up to the game. There were a few storylines that the media tried to use to generate interest in the week leading up to the game: Patriots vs. Rams just like in 2002, oldest coach-QB duo vs. youngest coach-QB duo in Super Bowl history, and speculation about Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski’s future, to name a few. None of these stories had legs.
Do you know what dominated the week leading up to the Super Bowl? The NBA. This week, Anthony Davis and Kristaps Porzingis requested trades from their respective teams (Porzingis’ request was granted as he was shipped off to the Dallas Mavericks; Davis will likely not be dealt until the offseason). The NFL went largely unnoticed in the week leading up to its biggest event of the year all because of mid-season drama from another league.
That’s a very tough look for the NFL. The biggest headline I saw other than the manufactured ones I listed above was Rams DB Nickell Robey-Coleman saying that age has “taken a toll” on Brady, to which pretty much everyone said “Hey man shut up, you almost ruined your team’s chance to make it this far.”
I’m not sure what the answer is when it comes to making the NFL’s off-the-field product as entertaining as the NBA’s. However, I am sure that something has to be done when the most exciting moment of the Super Bowl is a pregame commercial for Avengers: Endgame. Many people have speculated that the NBA will overtake the NFL in terms of popularity within the next decade. I don’t know how true that is, because the NFL’s on-the-field product is still the best of the Big 4 sports leagues, but with the recent emergence of stars on a ton of teams throughout the NBA and the increased marketability of those stars, it’s not as crazy a thought as it seemed at first.
ReJoyce 