Super Bowl 50: Peyton Manning Rides Into the Bay Area Sunset

Denver Broncos logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On this golden anniversary of the Super Bowl at a football stadium named for a jeans manufacturer near San Francisco, the Denver Broncos' defense ruled over the Carolina Panthers 24-10, easing the way for quarterback Peyton Manning to retire in style should he choose to do so.

The Broncos' D held Cam Newton and company's explosive offense in the same manner that they handled Pittsburgh and New England during the playoffs, limiting the Panthers to ten points and causing five turnovers--one of which resulted in a touchdown.  Not for nothing was Von Miller named the Super Bowl MVP.

Manning didn't have a great game either, having thrown for 104 yards and getting sacked five times.  But the way his team's defense had been playing, it wasn't a problem.  Now, with adding to the Manning family's total of four Super Bowl victories (both Peyton and Eli have two each), he can just sit back, sip the brew he holds a distributorship in, collect the money on all those TV endorsements, and decide what to do next.

That's the game, such as it was.  As for everything else that makes up a Super Bowl . . .

• We expect this at every major sporting event now.  The ruthless crackdown on "undesirables" to put on a shiny, happy show for the visitors.  The super-patriotic pregame show with the celebrity singer who screws up the national anthem, all paid for with "your" tax dollars.  Only those with oodles of money get to see the Big Game while the rest of us peasants watched on TV (nearly 112 million, according to CBS).  All this to show the rest of the world that America is still The Greatest Country On The Planet, and that's no Donald Trump hyperbole.
• Whose bright idea was it to schedule Coldplay as the headline act for the Super Bowl halftime show?  (Wasn't Taylor Swift available?)  Fortunately, Beyonce (who used the occasion not only to figuratively raise a middle finger to racist police, but to promote her upcoming tour) and Bruno Mars were around to keep things from flatlining.  But the whole show still seemed like an extended commercial for next week's Grammy awards, which just happen to be on CBS.
• Companies pay exorbitant amounts of money to get their ads into the Super Bowl telecast.  So how come most of them turn out to be boring, confusing, imitative, insensitive, or just plain stupid?  ("Puppymonkeybaby"?  Really?)  Oh well, they got what they paid for.
• Can we please end the new postgame tradition of Hall of Famers like Joe Namath parading the Vince Lombardi Trophy through the gauntlet of players from the winning team, who then put their paws and saliva on it before it's even officially awarded?  Gross.  Yuck.  Eww.  This makes the Stanley Cup ceremony seem classier by comparison.