Bradshaw, Rihanna Among Three Super Bowl Lowlights

The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a spectacular Super Bowl on Sunday that was spoiled by classless Terry Bradshaw.

Author:
Bill Huber
Publish date:
Feb 13, 2023 11:21 AM EST

In this story:

Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Leave it to Terry Bradshaw to ruin a great moment after a great game.

The Hall of Fame quarterback and longtime member of the NFL on Fox panel got the honor of interviewing Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and coach Andy Reid after they beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a Super Bowl thriller on Sunday.

After twice calling Reid “big guy,” he turned to the coach and said, “Come on, waddle over here.”

After the interview, Bradshaw said, “Have a cheeseburger on us.”

Reid handled it with class; the football world might have rejoiced had he grabbed Bradshaw’s hat and smacked him across the face. Hunt, who has an amazing head of hair, could have followed with a bald joke.

Or Fox should yank him off our TV screens permanently because, honestly, what has Bradshaw added to the viewing experience over the years?

Just about everyone in media has ripped Bradshaw. That’s the low-hanging fruit. Also, just about everyone celebrated Rihanna’s halftime performance.

“Rihanna Super Bowl halftime review: A pop icon delivers a masterclass,” screams The Washington Post headline, for instance.

Stated The Atlantic breathlessly: “No one should be surprised by what her Super Bowl performance was: an act of radical minimalism, seasoned with lovable humanity. It was austere yet scruffy, flat yet real. Some halftime performers have dazzled through exertion. Some have done so by sending messages. Many have failed, or at least flailed, in the process. But Rihanna wanted us mesmerized by the thing itself, by the images and the sounds, and she largely succeeded.”

Yes, grabbing your crotch and smelling it and rubbing it with the microphone is so dazzling, so mesmerizing.

I get it, plenty of you are going to fire back with that “Old man yells at clouds” meme. My 50th birthday is a bit too close for comfort. But it’s not about being an old guy who grew up in a different generation. We’ve got two boys, 10 and 12. We’ve done well to raise a couple intelligent, respectful kids.

Our 10-year-old watched the game with us, and my wife and I cringed after a few minutes of the halftime show. Fortunately, we paused the game enough times that we were able to fast-forward through the rest of her show.

Not to go off on too much of a tangent here, but it’s all part of the cultural rot. And it’s all such a mixed message. Men are supposed to treat women with respect and not as sexual objects. And yet, what did boys and young men across America see? A beautiful woman with an amazing voice grabbing her ass suggestively.

Showing where we are as a society, that she does is no longer considered controversial or risque. Rather, it is good and should be celebrated.

The next time Detroit Lions running back Jamaal Williams is fined for his touchdown celebrations, like he was after scoring a pair of touchdowns at Green Bay in Week 18, his appeal to the hypocritical NFL should be clips of Rihanna’s halftime show.

Finally, what an embarrassment to have so many players slipping and sliding all over the playing field. The next time the NFL wants to hold the game on an ice rink, let me suggest a wonderful city in Wisconsin and one of the most iconic stadiums in all of sports.

I know, I know, there’s not enough hotel rooms in Green Bay to host a Super Bowl. But Sunday was a glorious, sunny day with highs in the low 40s. The field would have been infinitely more playable than the one in the Arizona desert.