A Super Bowl of Redemptions

Sam Darnold (left) and Kenneth Walker III

Siri, what is Super Bowl Sunday?

Liberal Siri: It is America's annual tribute to violence, unregulated capitalism, and cholesterol.

Conservative Siri: It's the most wonderful time of the year!

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Super Bowl LX was played last night, at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home in the San Francisco 49ers, although it's closer to San Jose than to San Francisco. In fact, it's further from downtown San Francisco (43.6 miles) than my home of East Brunswick is from Midtown Manhattan (39.7 miles).

It was a chance at redemption for the Seattle Seahawks, after their loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX, 11 years earlier, when their head coach at the time, Pete Carroll, made the dumbest play call in the history of football.

It was a chance at redemption for their quarterback, Sam Darnold, who had previously washed out with the New York Jets, the Carolina Panthers and the San Francisco 49ers, and had been rejected by the Minnesota Vikings, despite getting them to a 14-3 regular-season record last season, before failing in the Playoffs. It was even a chance at redemption for his Southern California hometown, San Clemente, which is where Richard Nixon moved after he resigned the Presidency in disgrace.

Some people thought it was a chance at redemption for the Patriots: For the 1st time in 29 years, they were playing in a Super Bowl without Bill Belichick as head coach and Tom Brady at quarterback. They had been 6-3 in Super Bowls when suspected of cheating, and 0-2 in them before that when not.

There would be no redemption for the New York Jets or their fans. If the Patriots won, that would be the Jets' arch-rivals winning it -- again! If the Seahawks won, that would be Darnold winning it, reminding them of how their team totally mishandled him.

Unfortunately, for most of the game, it was looking like the worst-played Super Bowl, both teams combined, ever. For the 1st 46 minutes of the game, into the 4th quarter, the score was Seahawks 12, Patriots 0. Being a Yankee Fan, and thus hating all New England sports teams (though not the region of New England itself), and being a fan of fairness, and thus hating all cheating, I was happy about the score.

But, despite the fact that there were no turnovers until a Patriot fumble in the last 15 seconds of the 3rd quarter, the level of play was terrible. The Patriots had 4 1st Downs, while the Seahawks had 4 field goals, and neither team had scored a touchdown. There was a decent shot at the 1st shutout in a Super Bowl, and it wasn't even because the Seattle defense was so strong: It was that the New England offense, coached by Mike Vrabel and quarterbacked by Derek Maye, was so inept. They had not gotten further downfield than the Seahawks' 43-yard line.

Seahawk kicker Jason Myers was beginning to look like he would be the 1st placekicker to be named the Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl. He ended up becoming the 1st man to kick 5 field goals in a Super Bowl, matching his uniform number; and scoring 17 points overall. (James White of the Patriots scored 20 -- 3 touchdowns and a 2-point conversion -- in Super Bowl LI, and Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles tied that record in Super Bowl LVII.)

Finally, with 13 minutes and 24 seconds to go, Darnold threw a 16-yard touchdown pass to AJ Barner, to give the Seahawks a 19-0 lead. Very briefly, the Patriots started to make it interesting, getting to 19-7 and driving for a 2nd touchdown, and we were all, "Oh, here we go again: No Belichick, no Brady, but are the Patriots cheating again? Is this gonna be another comeback like Super Bowl LI between the Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons, 28-3 becomes a Patriot overtime win?

But, no: That drive ended with 8:37 to go, with an interception by Julian Love that led to Myers' 5th field goal. It was then that I saw in the eyes of Maye the look of a quarterback who knew he was going to lose the Super Bowl. I had seen it before, in the eyes of Craig Morton in 1978, Ron Jaworski in 1981, Joe Theismann in 1984, Dan Marino in 1985, Tony Eason in 1986, John Elway 3 times in the late 1980s before he finally won two in the late 1990s, Jim Kelly 4 times in the early 1990s, Kurt Warner in 2002, Peyton Manning in 2014, and even 3-time winner Patrick Mahomes last year.

And on the Pats' next drive, Uchenna Nwosu intercepted a weak Maye pass, and returned it 45 yards for, Cliché Alert, the nail in the coffin. These 2 turnovers were a quick redemption for the Seahawk defense, which people were beginning to doubt. Final score: Seattle 29, New England 13.

The Seahawks had won their 2nd Super Bowl, and Seattle's 4th World Championship, following their win in Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, the 1979 NBA Championship of the now-on-hiatus Seattle SuperSonics, and the 1st Stanley Cup won by an American team, in 1917, but the long-defunct Seattle Metropolitans. If you count Major League Soccer, add 2 for the Seattle Sounders: 2016 and 2019. If you count the WNBA, add 4 for the Seattle Storm: 2004, 2010, 2018 and 2020. So that would be 10 titles for the Queen City of the Northwest.

Mike McDonald, at 38, became the 3rd-youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl, following Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams in LV and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers in XLIII, who were each 36. Kenneth Walker III rushed for 135 yards, the most in a Super Bowl in 28 years, and was named the MVP. And Darnold joined a select group of quarterbacks who had been mishandled by teams before being signed by teams willing to take a chance on them, and leading them to Super Bowl glory: Len Dawson, Earl Morrall, Jim Plunkett, Doug Williams, Brad Johnson, Drew Brees and Matthew Stafford.

As for the entertainment: The opening ceremony was led by Bay Area-based rock band Green Day, who played the title track of their best-known album, American Idiot. It was written in reflection of the President at the time, George W. Bush. Who knew that, one day, we would have a President whose words and actions would make him look even more idiotic?

Openly lesbian singer Brandi Carlisle sang "America the Beautiful." Black singer Coco Jones, daughter of 1990s Patriots player Mike Jones, sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," a.k.a. "The Black National Anthem," to which Trump and conservatives have objected in the past. The actual National Anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was sung by Charlie Puth, a white singer; but he was accompanied by saxophonist Kenny G, who is Jewish; and 3 multicultural groups: The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, the Sainted Trap Choir, and the Color of Noize Orchestra. All 3 songs were signed for the hearing impaired by men of color: "America the Beautiful" by Julian Ortiz, Hispanic; the other 2 by Fred Beam, black. It was multicultural, it was intersectional, and regardless of whether it was designed to make Trump angry, it surely did.

The halftime show was led by Puerto Rican singer Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a.k.a. Bad Bunny. When it was announced that he would be the halftime performer, Donald Trump lost whatever passes for his mind, seeing him as an immigrant who doesn't speak English, and doesn't represent American values. Puerto Ricans have officially been American citizens since President Woodrow Wilson, a man not exactly known for his tolerance of people of color, signed the Jones-Shafroth Act in 1917.

Did Bad Bunny make a political statement? Puedes apostar lo que quieras. (That means, "You can bet whatever you want." Apparently, there is no proper Spanish translation for the old Laugh-In phrase, "You bet your sweet bippy.") His delivery was almost entirely in Spanish. The show began with a stage full of people working in sugarcane fields, emblematic of Puerto Rico's poverty. He made a reference to Puerto Rico's troublesome electrical power grid, which the federal government has a responsibility to maintain, and doesn't.

He had a stage set of a block in a Puerto Rican city neighborhood, showing that Latinos and Latinas are just like Anglos, and just like any other immigrants. At one point, he fell through the stage, and seemed to crash into a private home, which the viewing audience took as a swipe at ICE's illegal entries.

In the show's most-talked-about moment, he handed an actual Grammy Award to a little boy. Officially, the boy was supposed to represent the boy he had once been, dreaming of stardom. But millions of people thought the boy was supposed to represent Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old Minneapolis resident detained by ICE for 12 days. Millions of those thought it actually was Liam, inadvertently bringing up the old racist trope of "They all look alike to me."

Guest stars included an earlier Puerto Rican singer, Ricky Martin; Mexican-American actress and businesswoman, and Bay Area native, Jessica Alba; and the only English-first performer of the show, Lady Gaga, who had been the halftime performer at Super Bowl LI. Bad Bunny closed by holding up a football printed with the words, "TOGETHER, WE ARE AMERICA," surrounded by the flags of every nation in the Western Hemisphere -- including, it should be noted, the United States -- and, emblazoned on the main scoreboard in big capital letters, "THE ONLY THING STRONGER THAN HATE IS LOVE." The message was inescapable.

So this Super Bowl also provided a moment of redemption for all of us, not just those of Spanish heritage, because we are all descended from immigrants. I understood maybe 1 word out of 5 that Bad Bunny sang, and I am not a fan of Latin music. And I didn't immediately understand every message that he was trying to send. But I certainly understood that he was sending messages.

And Trump got the message. Instead of watching the "alternative halftime show" put on by Turning Point USA, the organization run by the recently assassinated bigot Charlie Kirk, Trump clearly watched the Bad Bunny show, and called it "disgusting," and saying it didn't uphold American values.

This has now been said so often, I have to issue a Cliché Alert for it: With Donald Trump, every accusation is a confession.

The alternative show was watched by about 6 million people. The main show, and the game it paused? About 135 million. The game itself had an average of about 125 million, slightly under last season's all-time record.