Takeaways from Super Bowl LIV

The Akron Pros, the 1920 Champions.

1.  The Roman numerals for 54 are LIV.

When it gets to the big Roman numerals, I always get confused.

2.  I'm older than the Super Bowl, although not by much.

The National Football League completed its 100th Season, which means that the NFL started in 1919.

Except it didn't. The NFL was founded on August 20, 1920.  It hasn't started its 100th Season. This is the second year in a row that they've claimed 1919 as their foundational date, but it isn't.

3.  The halftime show was weird.

And I do mean weird.  I'm not sure what was up with it.  Shakira's singing was lackluster and her dancing was both embarrassing and odd.  Jennifer Lopez was effectively nude. 

The whole thing was much like a cabaret scene out of Godfather II, which is supposed to demonstrate the fallen nature of pre revolution Cuba.

4. Why does a football game require a big halftime show?

I still don't get why this is.  The entire thing was not only weird, but really overblown.

5.  Electric cars are set to replace gasoline engined cards quicker than I supposed.

I had thought it would be a decade.  The full scale electric car advertisements by major automobile manufacturers would strongly suggest that it'll be quicker than that.  More on that tomorrow.

6.  Virtue signalling works better in the abstract.

A few liberal media outlets spent some time hand wringing over the Kansas City Chiefs and their traditions, with the dying New Republic taking time out from advertising its trip to Cuba this year (maybe to see the cabaret?) to really dive off into the shallow end of this pool.

It's probably because my interest in sports is so small that I don't really worry much about this, but at any rate everyone seemed to get over it for the game.

7.  It was the Women's Year in advertising, sort of, if not in the halftime show.

A few companies spent some time really attempting to show that they back women and women's causes, even showing some in football uniforms, even though actual physical size and strength requirements make football solidly a male game.  To watch them, we'd nearly suppose that there was a campaign to require female admittance into the NFL, when in fact women are free to enter the NFL if they can play the game.  Biology generally prevents that, although I'd be surprised if the day doesn't arrive when there's a female kicker (there was, fwiw, a female professional baseball player as early as 1922).  That's not the point.

The point is that its really odd to see the advertisements in the same year that featured a blatantly sexist halftime show.  Perhaps a person isn't supposed to say that, as both performers are Latina performers and much of the performance was in Spanish, but a pole dancing Jennifer Lopez isn't intrinsically different from a pole dancer at a strip club, particularly as Lopez started off wearing less than strippers probably wear when they start their act. 

It's weird how in an era when we're having a trial of Harvey Weinstein for being a creeper we're parading Shakira and Lopez around nearly nude on stage.

Something is wrong with that.

8.  The NFL has no pre war heroes?

Or so it would seem.

Professional football really wasn't a big deal until after World War Two, but you would think that in listing its fifty great players for its pre game celebration of its centennial it'd have found at least a few of them who played the game before 1945.

What about Jim Thorpe, for example?

9.  Mr. Peanut is back.

Thank goodness.