Grid Irons Matter!

Today the 49th (XLIX) Super Bowl takes place in the US. As with every year this sees the winners of the American Football Conference (AFC) take on the winners of the National Football Conference (NFC) in a one off spectacular. This is the one American football game that is watched by absolutely everyone including people like me who are still convinced that "Grid Iron" is a rhyming euphemism for Grindr.

With some 112m Americans gathering together and throwing viewing parties to watch what is admittedly a very slow sport the spectacle of the Super Bowl provides lots of opportunity to discuss broad brush politics and the big social/cultural issues of the day through the theme of the game itself, the commercials and the half-time show. In short the Super Bowl is the US' answer to the Eurovision Song Contest.

This year there could only be one theme for the game - the race-baiting of President Obama and his Democrat Party that exploded in August with the killing of Micheal Brown in the Saint Louis suburb of Ferguson and spread across the regular National Football League (NFL) season to engulf the death of Eric Gardner amid many nights of rioting and the killing of two police officers in New York City.

So in the black corner we have NFC champions the Seattle Seahawks. Using the Saint Louis Rams would have been too obvious not least because there could have been no other explanation for them making it to the Super Bowl. The next obvious choice would have been a team from the Democrat heartland of California which saw similar race riots in 1994 following the Rodney King case. Unfortunately California's only real NFL team are the San Francisco 49's. With San Francisco being the gay capital of the US the 49's are already used to represent homosexuality as they were in Super Bowl 47. Therefore Seattle was settled upon because despite being one of the US' whiter states it has a long history of protest and was scene to some of the most violent "Black Lives Matter" protests.

Representing most everybody else there is the New England Patriots. Despite being solidly liberal and Democrat New England is another one of the US' whiter states. Plus the unwarranted Department of Justice (DoJ) civil rights investigations which fuelled the protests represent a clear attack on that bastion of American Patriotism - the US Constitution, particularly the 4th and 5th amendments. However throughout the DoJ's continuing assault on the Constitution the majority of the US' media, public and political classes remained silent. In fact they seemed so lacking in courage and cowed in fear that many were left questioning what on earth had happened to the Patriots balls? Apart from being a reference to the antics of Attorney General Eric Holder and the DoJ "Deflategate" could also be interpreted as a reference to the Inland Revenue Service's (IRS) attempts to suppress Conservative groups with politically motivated investigations.

Obama's attempts to stoke a race war in the US have had a particular resonance with the NFL for two main reasons. Firstly many players have worn T-shirts in warm-ups showing solidarity with the cause and the Saint Louis Rams even made the infamous "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" gesture during a game in November. As other NFL players have been fined and suspended for appearing to pray during games it is hard to explain why the Rams weren't sanctioned for this especially as they were showing support for violent crime.

Secondly throughout the protests people kept asking the question of whether young black men were still just nothing but thugs when they were playing sports for teams supported by white people. Looking at the exploits of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Josh McNary, Darren Sharper, A.J Johnson and Jamesis Winston to name but a few the answer is clearly; "Yes, absolutely." Being Hispanic former Patriots player Aaron Hernandez's trial on murder charges is an indirect reference to this.

One possible explanation for the near chronic levels of thuggishness and criminality amid NFL players is the draft system. An NFL team cannot simply sign up a talented member of the public to play for them. Instead they are limited to drafting in players who have played in the college feeder leagues. Although being a big money sport in its own right college football is officially an amateur sport meaning that all the profits go to the colleges rather then the players. Also the college system demands that in order to play for a team a player must maintain a passing level of academic achievement. As a result you get this very strange situation where young men who are otherwise functionally illiterate suddenly start writing degree level essays which allow them to make their college rich.

This culture where it is OK to break all the rules provided that you're good at sport may well be why so many players seem unable to obey the law once they graduate to the NFL. With these men being really the only role models for young black men in the US it is not hard to imagine this culture of you can behave as you like helping to breed young thugs like Micheal Brown. Other example of poor black role models of course includes various 'musicians' such as Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston.

So there seems nothing more to say except for a score prediction from a Brit who still can't understand how the Americans have managed to get rugby so wrong; While the NFL may be keen to preserve their plantation if the recent mid-terms are anything to go by the Patriots are going to win by the most devastatingly large margin in Super Bowl history.

As a result it's time focus on side bets. The main one of these is whether World famous domestic violence victim Rihanna will join Katy Perry during the half-time show. After all no decision has already been made so it really, really, really does depend on the outcome of the coded discussion about whether Bobbi Kristina Brown is dead in the water or whether she can be revived.

16:45 on 1/2/15 (UK date).