The league may want to pretend it has changed but TV coverage in the US reminded us that it remains in love with its own importance
With Tom Brady finally, probably off the scene and the age of Patrick Mahomes upon us, this year’s Super Bowl promised a new beginning for football in America, a kind of cultural reset after the Kaepernick-Trump years. Rihanna back on stage for the first time in four years! Two Black quarterbacks facing off for the first time in Super Bowl history! Greg Olsen’s emergence as America’s favorite play-by-play guy and the enduring gap-toothed charm of Michael Strahan! At each turn of the half-day behemoth that was Fox’s pre-game coverage, viewers were handed some fresh invitation to believe that we have entered a new era. But as kickoff grew closer and the jingoism thickened, a darker truth became clear: the NFL has not changed. It’s just found a new and bigger cast of characters to buy into its bullshit.
No country has America’s gift for blending sport, militarism, celebrity, and consumerism into a single package, and there’s no better demonstration of that gift than the Super Bowl. Fox, a network completely at ease with the death cult of modern America, is maybe the perfect home for an assignment like this, its on-air talents blending football pedigree and thoughtless patriotism in perfect, Super Bowl-ready proportion.
