The Super Bowl used to mean something. Back when the hits were real, the quarterbacks weren’t protected like endangered pandas, and nobody had to pretend they cared about the halftime show. It was pure, or at least as pure as anything could be in America—a blood ritual disguised as sport, a contest that granted one city bragging rights and the other a fresh excuse to drink themselves to death.
Not anymore.
Now, it’s political theater, a corporate gangbang, a social experiment in mass hypnosis where grown men scream at LED screens while billionaires count their money in private suites. And towering over it all, like a bloated specter of American decline, is Donald Trump—the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, here not to watch football, but to remind the world that he still exists.
He needs this game more than either team does. He has spent the week slobbering over Patrick Mahomes, calling him a “winner” in a desperate attempt to align himself with something that isn’t complete failure. Mahomes, for his part, handled it the way a man handles a handshake with a sweaty uncle—polite, distant, waiting for it to end. He knows the game. He knows that no matter how many rings he wins, Trump will always try to leech off his success, the same way he does with everything he doesn’t understand.
On the other side of this reheated Super Bowl, we have the Philadelphia Eagles, a team built on grit, blue-collar mythology, and a fanbase that once booed Santa Claus and threw batteries at opposing players. A city whose greatest cultural export is the Rocky Balboa underdog narrative, even though they’ve already won this thing before. If they win again, it will mean nothing. If they lose, it will mean even less.
Because this game isn’t about football. It’s about distraction. It’s about keeping America from thinking too hard about the actual problems—the dying economy, the failing infrastructure, the fact that half the country would rather throw fists over a penalty call than acknowledge that their quality of life has collapsed into a Walmart parking lot of despair.
Somewhere in a private suite, Taylor Swift watches the chaos unfold. She isn’t just here for her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce—she is here as a force of nature, a woman whose very presence sends certain men into a frothing rage. She is modern America’s most powerful cultural figure, and Trump hates it. He has spent years trying to insert himself into her world, trying to wrap his stubby little fingers around her influence, and he has failed every time.
This is the real war playing out in the background. The old America vs. the new. The fading, bloated relics of the 20th century clawing at relevance, trying to convince the world that they still own the narrative, while the future marches on without them.
The game itself? A sideshow. A meaningless collision of millionaires, sponsored by gambling apps and pharmaceutical giants, designed to keep the peasants entertained while the walls of the empire crack and crumble.
When the final whistle blows, one team will win, one team will lose, and Trump will still be here, lurking, tweeting, begging for relevance. But the truth is, there are no winners in America tonight. Only distractions. Only illusions. Only the sinking feeling that the game is already over, and we lost.