STEPHEN KRUISER: This Awful Thing That the Super Bowl Has Become Belongs on the Hallmark Channel*.
The greatest evil visited upon us by the non-fans who have taken over the Super Bowl is the halftime show abomination. The NFL rulebook states that, “Between the second and third periods, there shall be an intermission of 13 minutes.” Again, that’s from the official rules. Because the Super Bowl has very little to do with football, the rules are tossed out the window in order to appease the television network programming wraiths whose offices are in the ninth ring of Hell. The Super Bowl halftime show finishes a few minutes before Opening Day in Major League Baseball. A slow learner could get an associate’s degree during the Super Bowl halftime.
No true fan wants there to be extra time between the action of a football game. Oh, and we don’t care about the party cuisine either. Get the Lipton’s onion soup mix, make some dip, and get your idiotic commercial-loving butt away from the TV.
Since I don’t believe in coincidences, I read a lot into the rise in popularity of the Super Bowl and its attendant parties happening concurrently with the wussification of the game of football. Within ten years, I swear that the defenders will have to seek verbal permission to come in contact with the offense. In an effort to bring more fans to football, the NFL apparently believes that gutting everything that’s good about the game of football is the key. Roger Goodell (told you I didn’t like him) probably dreams of the day that NFL scores look like NBA scores.
I know that we real football fans will never get the Super Bowl back. Goodell’s vision board probably sees a day when there are four quarters of halftime performances, with 13 minutes of flag football between the second and third, and the games will be played in Stockholm or Buenos Aires (a rant for another day). Perhaps I’ll start a company that organizes Super Bowl parties for true fans. Membership will be predicated upon things like knowing the difference between encroachment and offside, or being able to name at least five players from the 1950s and ’60s.
* Provided your smart TV has bilingual closed captioning enabled:
Gosh, it's hard to understand why the Washington Post had to lay off half its staff considering the fact that they routinely churn out such excellent reporting as the piece below. https://t.co/iYanFKo23e
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) February 6, 2026