Finneran: Super Bowl 54

Friday, February 07, 2020

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

}It was a pretty good game. And Jimmy Garoppolo is not the goat of the 49ers loss. In fact, he would have been the hero if they had been able to hang on. A tipped ball at the line of scrimmage, a false start, and a sack are not the fault of the quarterback. Indeed, we might give credit to Kansas City for big plays rather than nitpicking the 49ers performance. More on the game in a moment.

The halftime show was a disgrace. In the aftermath of the Ray Rice and Tyreek Hill revelations, the league belatedly professed its high regard and total respect for women. It then made the objectification of women the centerpiece of its signature event. The Shakira-J.Lo show might be fine for the Harvey Weinstein demographic. It might be fine for a late night in Vegas. It might be fine for a bachelor party. It is not fine for my grandchildren, all of whom were watching the game. The pelvic thrust carnival should be permanently retired.

These laments are not the laments of an old cranky guy. I did my own market test on some of the young mothers at the gym. To a person, they were horrified. They have young sons and daughters and they know the attraction of the “forbidden fruit”. The initial thought is to shoo the kids out of the room or to simply turn off the television. But the parents know that the kids will simply go to their phones to check out whatever it is that the parents are trying to deny them. So the parents surrender into a fake lets-try-to-ignore-the-gyrations on the screen pose, all the while being appalled at the explicit sexualization in front of them.

Question: Is there a single owner in this league of hypocrites and frauds who will take a stand for minimal standards of decency?

Answer: No.

Here’s an observation and a suggestion. In a league where about seventy-five percent of the players are black and where the television audience of 102 million viewers probably has at least twenty-five million African Americans tuned in, why not celebrate the black colleges and their renowned marching bands?

Those bands are legendary for their skills and their performances. Have head-to-head band competitions for the AFC and NFC championship half-time shows, with the two winners facing off during half-time at the Super Bowl. It would be great publicity for the colleges themselves and the entertainment itself would be a wholesome celebration of discipline, practice, talent, and teamwork. Give each school band a million dollars and give the winning band five million dollars. You want viewers? You’d probably have 200 million people watching such a competition! And you could let your kids stay in the room!!

Back to the game…………There was a parallel with the Patriots-Falcons Super Bowl 51 for the first three-quarters of the game. Fans will recall that Tom Brady was the essence of mediocrity in that game. He was no GOAT. Rather, he would have been panned as the goat for a dreary lackluster losing performance until that thrilling fourth-quarter comeback and overtime march to the endzone. Patrick Mahomes was tracking Brady’s shabby performance until the fourth quarter, when he lit things up and went from goat to MVP.

Perhaps there’s a transition underway from the Brady-Brees-Rodgers era to the Mahomes-Jackson era but I’d never bet against Tom Brady. Mahomes is fun to watch but get Brady a good tight end we can watch a master at work for a few more seasons.

The Chiefs best not get cocky.

{image_2}Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

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Finneran: Super Bowl 54

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