NFL Needs To Get Back to the Basics With Super Bowl Halftime Show Next Year

Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at Super Bowl LX is the subject of many hot takes on Monday.

Despite appearances from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, many fans online were upset about the predominantly Spanish performance. This ongoing social media outrage is why Roc Nation, who books the Super Bowl halftime show, has to do something more universally beloved next season.

Listen, Bad Bunny’s performance objectively was not awful. Even if you couldn’t understand the lyrics, the stagework, choreography, and overall video production was first class. The special guests and Easter eggs were able to be identified by fans that weren’t familiar with Bad Bunny prior to the Super Bowl.

There’s no denying that the beats were groovy and even the stingiest Bad Bunny haters have to recognize that the “Together we are America” theme was supposed to be a unifying message during turbulent times in our nation.

But next year, the NFL absolutely has to get back to the basics.

After the Super Bowl’s opening night on Monday in San Jose, clips surfaced that most of the players participating in the NFL’s biggest game didn’t know any Bad Bunny songs. As the game grew nearer, similar clips from the Super Bowl’s Radio Row showcased big stars from the football world and beyond being unfamiliar with the work of Bad Bunny.

The NFL currently has an obsession with making the sport more global. During Super Bowl week, commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t slam the door shut about an international expansion team at some point.

But the majority of fans who currently tune into the Super Bowl are still American – despite the league’s ongoing global initiatives.

Check your political viewpoints at the door for this next part.

Last season, the older, boomer crowd was upset about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance. The older demographic completely missed the cultural impact the performance had on the history of hip-hop music, headlined by Kendrick’s beef with Drake being dragged out on a national stage.

Not only did the older crowd completely miss Kendrick’s not-so-subtle jab at Drake, but they absolutely ignored his overall message about systemic racism in America. That message was part of the reason why the halftime show was booked – and most of the core audience didn’t grasp that overarching messaging.

In the current political climate, the NFL and Roc Nation tried to shoehorn a performance from an internationally-beloved Puerto Rican star that was meant to unify the country. The issue? Most of the NFL’s core demographic had never heard of the artist. Certainly, they didn’t understand the message, either.

Love it or hate it, these boomers are not quitting football as they promised they would when Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem one full decade ago.

Instead of fanning social media flames and backlash from older generations of fans who can’t comprehend why the Super Bowl is strategically placing these halftime shows, they should just take a year off and give their core demographic what they’ve been pounding the table for.

What’s Bruno Mars up to? Metallica? They can still jam, right? Maybe Taylor Swift finally gives the country what they've been waiting for?

People will still find plenty of reasons to complain, but it feels like the rest of us just need a year off from hearing about it.