First, let's get one thing straight about the Super Bowl. It was called that in the beginning because it was a game between the champion of the National Football League and the champion of the upstart American Football League. There was a lot of interest in the game because it involved two leagues that were bitter rivals.

The National League champions, as expected, won the first Super Bowl and the second, but a strange thing happened in Super Bowl III. The New York Jets, not the best AFL team in the regular season, beat the NFL champs, the Baltimore Colts, and a year later, in the fourth and final real Super Bowl, the AFL Kansas City Chiefs scored an easy victory over the NFL Minnesota Vikings.

And then the American Football League ceased to exist, its teams joining the National Football League. The NFL and the media have kept the Super Bowl name alive ever since, but the over-hyped contest is actually the National Football League championship game, which goes back to 1933 (and in 1940 was won by the Chicago Bears in the biggest blowout in history, 73-0, over Washington).

UNFORTUNATELY, the 2026 NFL championship game between Seattle and New England took a back seat to a controversy over the half-time show that starred Bad Bunny. That statement might be the most embarrassing thing ever said about the National Football League, which has turned its biggest game of the season into an overblown television event in which the intermission is three times longer than a halftime break during the regular season.

Why this football game should be interrupted for a concert puzzles me. I have no quarrel with the performers who've been featured over the years, but neither have I had any interest in watching them. I tune in to watch a football game, not a concert staged in the worst possible musical venue.

What was great about 2026 is I switched to YouTube at halftime and watched highlights of the Winter Olympics. Getting these events in small doses was more entertaining than watching NBC's live coverage. Then I went back to football when when the game resumed.

AGAIN, I have nothing against Bad Bunny, though I was not impressed during my only exposure to him. That's when he was host of "Saturday Night Live" at the beginning of the 2025 fall season. However, he has many fans all over the world and, at the moment, is considered by some to be the world's most popular entertainer.

But Donald Trump and a bunch of right wing soreheads were so upset about Bad Bunny being selected for the Super Bowl halftime show that someone got the bright idea to organize an alternative event around Kid Rock. I know who he is, but have never seem him perform. From his visits with Trump, I'm left with the impression he's a professional idiot. Other performers in the alternative event were completely unknown to me, so there was no way I was interested in watching them.

(Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. who is Jughead to Trump's Archie Andrews, made an even more ridiculous suggestion for the halftime show. His choice: Lee Greenwood, the 83-year-old country singer whose hits are unknown to most of us.)

As an old fart — a very old fart — I'd prefer a much shorter halftime break and fill that time with a marching band, with Texas A&M and Ohio State being my top choices, or the current champion from Drum Corps International, though they would have to make formation adjustments to reach the crowd on both sides of the field.

THE MOST ridiculous thing about the Super Bowl is the cost of tickets. I hadn't paid attention until this year. Tickets range from about $4,500 to $10,000 apiece.

When you consider the additional costs — airfare, hotel and meals — this game qualifies for a joke that has been around since vaudeville: First prize is two tickets to the Super Bowl; second prize is four tickets.

Football games, particularly the Super Bowl, are much better watched on television, and best watched at home. There you can mute commercials and switch to another channel at halftime. You can't mute anything at the stadium.

OH YES, the commercials. When will media put to rest the myth there is anything special about Super Bowl commercials? Judged this year's best such commercial was a Dunkin' spot that featured Ben Affleck, Ted Danson, Jason Alexander, Jennifer Anniston, Tom Brady, and others. The thing is, this commercial wasn't particularly good. It was a corny spoof of "Good Will Hunting," and got by on star power, nothing else. It looked like it was thrown together in a hurry.

(I muted commercials during the game and scarcely glanced at them because I was on my iPad when football action was interrupted. The next day I read the Dunkin' commercial was the people's choice, so I found it on YouTube.)

BUT BACK to Bad Bunny. Right wing rabble-rousers at Fox and the other propaganda networks ridiculed the singer's performance because it was done in Spanish. Wow! What a surprise!

Some of the nutjobs claimed a Super Bowl halftime performer should be a unifier, someone who brings us together. Someone who performs in Spanish to a United States audience is a divider, they said.

These whiners are people who support and worship Donald Trump, the most divisive president in American history, a man who insulted Bad Bunny in a lunatic post on his laughingly named Truth Social platform. He also called one of our Olympic skiiers "a loser" just because the athlete spoke his mind when asked how if felt to represent the United States.

Face it, folks, Rosie O'Donnell's description of Trump is perfect. He actually is Tangerine Mussolini, a would-be dictator and constant embarrassment. He seems determined to tear ours country in two and set us back 100 years. And he won't be satisfied until his name is attached to everything. ("Welcome to the 2027 Donald J. Trump Super Bowl!)

MY RANT isn't finished. I believe the National Football League may be sowing the seeds of its own destruction by endorsing a gambling website and encouraging fans to bet on almost anything — what will be the next play, how many touchdowns will a certain player score, how many times will a commentator say "RPO," how many stupid questions will the sideline reporter ask?

If there is a pro football gambling scandal, it will come as no surprise. As it is, I am suspicious when an offensive lineman are caught holding defensive players, nullifying a 50-yard gain, or when a defensive back blatantly commit pass interference, giving the opponent a first down on the five-yard line.

Yes, gambling comes naturally; as such, it will always be a fact of life, but it's unwise for a professional sports league to promote betting as a fun thing to do during a game.

BUT THAT'S the kind of muddled thinking expected from a league that put 32 teams into eight mini-divisions. That means teams play only six division games and 11 games against other opponents. Last season no team in the NFC South division had a winning record, yet one of them, the Carolina Panthers, made the playoffs.

On both the professional and collegiate level there is a tendency to reward as many teams as possible, regardless of their competitive success (or failure). Thus college football teams need to win only half of their games to receive bids to a so-called bowl game.

No less than 68 college basketball teams are invited to participate in the NCAA's post-season tournament, though four of them will be eliminated via play-in games that indicate indecision on the part of the selection committee. (I wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA starts handing out participation trophies.)

THE NFL isn't much better. No less than 14 of the NFL's 32 teams make the playoffs. (It's highly unlikely, but possible that an NFL team might someday make it to the playoffs with a 4-13 record.)

It would make more sense — at least to me — for the NFL to have four divisions of eight teams each. Teams would play 14 division games and only three non-division games. And only the top team in each division would advance to the playoffs, which would result in just three games and be over in two weeks.

There are many reasons this suggestion would never be considered, the biggest being television, which provides the revenue that keeps big time sports in business. At the same time, sports are just as important to television, which needs games to fill their schedules, particularly on the several ESPN channels.

THOSE who watch sports events, whether in person or on television, have had to adjust. Games are longer now because of commercial breaks and delays for plays to be reviewed by officials. College basketball is particularly ridiculous in having media timeouts every four minutes.

Referee now makes decisions on the sideline after watching television replays. Among the really big questions: Who last touched the ball before it went out of bounds? As one who played a lot of basketball, I believe it's better to use a jump ball to settle this particular matter.

WORTH NOTING during the Super Bowl is a comment from announcer Mike Tirico who said that among teams in the NFL playoffs, the New England Patriots had the easiest schedule.

Like all religions, league officials in every sport expect followers to believe without questioning. In this case, to believe schedules are fair and balanced, and that procedures to determine playoff teams make sense.

Followers of Atlantic Coast Conference football learned last season this isn't the case. Duke and Virginia played for the conference championship, but it was Miami that made its way into the college football championship game.

The sport schedules that came closest to being fair were those in major league baseball before the two leagues expanded. Back then, each league had eight teams, and each team played every other team 22 times, with 11 of those at home, 11 on the road.

At the end of the 154-game season, only the best team in each league kept playing — in the World Series.

Now there are 30 major league baseball teams, 15 in each league, three five-team divisions within each league. I defy anyone to understand team schedules that are complicated by interleague games.

As the great Max Shulman used to write, I digress. The whole point of this piece is to put the Super Bowl in perspective and to say it's a pathetic situation when the answer to the question — Who won this year's biggest football game? — is the name of the halftime entertainer.