Be a Hater in These Super Bowl Times

 

I hate this fucking Super Bowl.

Now: am I really angry about football? Maybe not. Maybe this is all about the personal life stuff I've gone through these past two months, where I've watched most of the NFL playoffs in various hospital rooms. (I'm fine, by the way, I'm always a visitor in these rooms, not a patient.) The reason is I feel just a crushing overwhelming feeling of hopelessness lately, that we passed the point that anything can be done to stop this unending era of horror and depravity. That the authorities that should have stopped this have all been bought, the champions we should have had were insufficient and came up weak, that the media can only given token complaints, that many in the punditry class actually are all too happy to prove how smart they are and be contrarians about this. "No, it isn't that bad, relax, in fact, what you think is bad is good, because I see the nuisance of this situation, because I'm that much more wise and brilliant", says the opinion editors.

And yeah, maybe that is all a metaphor for something. I can't really say for sure. Nor will I be particular vague about it, what am I, Jonathan Swift? All I do know is that there is no part of me that wants to watch this unfold. I have no doubt about the outcome. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs will three-peat, and it will be miserable.

Here's what I don't want to hear: "relax, be positive, enjoy yourself." Instead, let's appreciate the power of Hating. I am full of Hate. This is a full-on, big league, major levels of Hate now in 2025. I think this is healthy, to really really deeply despise something. The power of positive thinking only gets you so far. No, you need to recognize when you're fucking pissed and you need to relish that emotion. Really stew in the broiling hatred. Braise yourself in your contempt. Be really fucking mad and don't give yourself a reason. Do you need a reason to enjoy something? No. The power of sports is to create completely arbitrary emotions. It is emotional gambling, and also real gambling, parasitic to a reckless degree. What happens with a random ball bouncing two thousand miles away means nothing to me. It has as much affect on my life as the shape stars million and billions of miles apart appear to have if viewed from Earth's arbitrary position in the universe. If the Broncos shocking us all and winning ten games in a season can bring me joy, than the Chiefs being this damn unending of a nuisance should also bring me to a rolling boil.

I have motto these days: A.B.H.

A. - Always

B. - Be

H. - Hatin' 

Always Be Hatin'. To not be hatin', to be moderate, to reconsider, to try to see both sides of the issue? Maybe think it's just a game, harmless. That's nice in academia. If we're talking about how Justinian was a great Emperor and also maybe might have destroyed the Western Empire and severely weakened the East, sure, we can have that debate. That's nice in the twilight of hindsight, having a drink as the sun goes down at a BBQ two thousand years later. To actually live in Eternal City while Belisarius and the Goths march back and forth up and down the peninsula ravaging everything, I think my opinion is going to be a lot clearer about fucking Emperor Justy: Always Be Hatin'. Somebody in the future will want to have the Patriots Dynasty vs Chiefs Dynasty argument, kinda like "is this worse than the Bush years?". (And yeah, it is.) Well, I don't care, I didn't want either. One year I have to listen to why gay people shouldn't exist, one year I have to listen to why trans people don't exist, and then I'm supposed to be nostalgic about one period versus another?

And I hate the fucking Chiefs, comprehensively, thoroughly. I certainly don't want to see them win, I don't want to see them lose anymore, I don't want to watch these guys on my TV. I don't want good football, I don't want bad football. I want no football from Kansas City, Missouri.

They're so full of shit they can't even figure out what state they're from.

And it is not just a Broncos thing. I know it sucks that my team shares a division with this team. We always play them hard, but it never matters. It isn't the Chief's position in history that annoys me, it's the Chiefs themselves. How they win. How they exist. It is anti-joy, purely an illusion of competition since the outcome is never in doubt.

Somebody is going to lie to me and say the Super Bowl can be fun on-paper. The Eagles are a scrappy organization. They seem better than they were two years ago when the Chiefs previously defeated them - on a final ref call, mind you, just in case you've forgotten how bad that last Super Bowl was. It was an utterly perfectly Chiefs-way of winning, with a yellow flag. That's how your season ends, time to wait until August when you can at least have fun again with regular season games that have some level of suspense to them.

You know Saquon Barkley? Really cool player. Can do amazing things now that he has a real O-line to help him push through the defense. Once he's past that first front, he will take it to the house once a game. Announcers and pundits have started mixing their sports metaphors with Barkley and what he does, talking about "home runs". It's awesome to see. The Eagles QB, Jalen Hurts is cool too. In some weird sportsy way of building narratives he's ended up in a feud with our president, which is nice, I guess. Hurts lives up to name sake since he always seems like he's one tackle away from snapping in half. Yet he keeps going. Philadelphia is a great town! I love how goofy and storied that fanbase is, from the legend of throwing batteries at Santa Claus to their intense self-inflicted agonies. They are never sure their team is any good, and maybe enjoy losing. Barkley is the best thing to ever happen to them and they do not know how to process it.

It will not matter. The way Chiefs football works is that there will be one 70 yard run, it will be the coolest thing that can happen on a football field. The crowd will go wild. And the refs will make sure it never happened. You all get to collectively sit the fuck back down, grumbling in your chairs. How dare you enjoy yourself? You fucking fools, you stupid scum, you miserable marks. Eat your garbage fried food and shut up, this is the biggest night in American entertainment, after all. You think a conviction in a court of law means anything? You think the plain language of the Constitution amounts of shit? No, shut up, you whiner.

Now the Eagles get to punt at 3rd and 11. We cut to commercials. Even the commercials are bad now. They're the Netflix blockbuster experience: more money than sense, full of expensive celebrity cameos, and all to sell tech-bro AI slop. Why is Matthew McConaughey eating dinner in the rain and why would AI ever help him? Oh, the Chiefs are back now. They'll drive for eight minutes, given two 15 yard penalties that should have been sacks, and not even bother to score a touch down. All they needed was a field goal. Back to commercials now. Oh look, two different gambling companies in a row. I can feed my dangerous addiction on the toilet now too? Even the Stadium this game is being played in is named after a gambling app.

Football stopped being fun sometime two weeks ago when the very first Chiefs fumble recovered by the Bill was taken away by the refs, and later a clear first down run was voided by the refs. They might not be crooked explicitly but sure seem to enjoy giving the Chiefs favorable outcomes. This was a week about Joe Buck and Troy Aikman got so fed up with watching Mahomes gain 15 yard penalties and ticky-tacky penalties that they were basically booing from the booth. By the way, I never saw that controversial first down, I turned that Bills games off in the first quarter. This was very easy because I was on the road listening on the radio, driving home from the hospital anyway. But still: it was the first Championship game for any conference I had not watched in years, since I became NFL-obsessed over a decade ago. I don't want to be here holding out hope, maybe if the rare percentage returns and rare odds come along, that if certain magical outcomes happen very late in the game, the nightmare can be averted. Maybe if Pennsylvania goes blue, I mean, maybe if Josh Allen breaks a run, something wonderful can happen. No, I have no belief any longer.

I know the Chiefs will win. 

They are explicitly miserable because of how good they are, yet in their cruelty, do not play like a good team until it matters. They hide in mediocrity, in low scores, only needing one good play. It seems like the refs save their ass because the Chiefs only play as well as they need to. If the refs didn't save their ass, they'd just put up 10% more juice. The Chiefs let my team, the Broncos, crush them into dust in Week 17, a 40-0 thrashing the likes of which have never happened in the Mahomes era. Also, they were not playing any of their starters, Patrick spent the time on the sideline making calls to Jake from State Farm or whatever it is he does with his free time. The game is a big fat asterisk. Actually all games with the Chiefs are an asterisk. If they appear close, it is an illusion. The Chiefs have lost one real game all season, and that was a total fluke that was not repeated when it mattered. If their coach, Andy Reid, thinks he needs 12 points to win, he'll get 12 points. If he thinks he needs 30, he'll get 30. If they needed 222, they would get 222. There is no stopping this.

I cannot call the Chiefs a terrifying juggernaut because that would be almost fun and dominant. We had a Superman team once, it was the 2015 Panthers led by Cam Newton, and it was a very fun team (that my Broncos comprehensively broke, btw). The Chiefs are more like... Dr. Manhattan. They are savants of this game, so advanced and so beyond it all, that they barely register as human anymore. They're not going to run up the score, they won't make the big plays, they won't even look particularly impressive. Because they've ceased caring. They just need to do as little as possible until that final drive when they have their flawless kicker, again, win the game.

I do have to mention that Harrison Butker, their kicker, is a huge vocal Trump guy. Mahomes' brother is a Trump guy. Supposedly Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville coached Patrick Mahomes, since history can be easily rewritten and the weirder the lie, the more power it has. Fuck all that. I would probably hate the Chiefs even without this. I hated Tom Brady even without the red Trump hat in his locker.

The Chiefs are not entertainment. They just win. Cam Newton had funny hats and nicknames. He was a character. He performed outrageous feats of athleticism that cost him his long-term career for the crowds. The most character-ful part of the Chiefs is their cheerleader up in the celebrity box, Taylor Swift. Mahomes barely flicks his wrist and somehow its a touchdown. Then walks back to the sideline, chewing on his mouth guard, oozing drool, without joy. This game is beneath him now. There isn't even the bitter resentment of last year when these Chiefs seemed to march on with this sense of totally-unearned rage at the audience for ever doubting them. This no personality on the Chiefs. Tom Brady was a complete asshole, you could tell. You can still tell he's a deeply unpleasant person when he's out trying to be charming calling games and ending up feeling robotic and creepy. "Robotic" is more than what we have here. There is nothing human remaining in Kansas City, it is not even machine-like. It is simply a fact of dominance so dominant it can only be defined by its own dominance.

How many minutes until half time? Will Kendrick save us from this nightmare? Will he save America from all its other nightmares? The ends of the field have had the words "END RACISM" taken off them, and the crowds of Chiefs-faithful will happily do a racist Tomahawk chop to celebrate that Racism is over. Thank god.

All you can hope and pray. Maybe the old man will retire. Maybe the older players will move on. Maybe Mahomes will decide there's no more worlds to conquer and instead play baseball in the minor Carolina leagues and go hang out with cartoon animals instead for a few years. Because right now, there's nothing that can be done to stop what seems to be coming. 

Final Score: Chiefs 31, Eagles 28. Somebody will tell me this was a fun game tomorrow morning. They gave in to astonishment, I will not.

And you're expected to somehow find a silver lining in all this. The inevitability of all this. Be a good sport about it.

Fuck that. Be a Hater.