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NFL Has An Ulterior Motive For Ignoring Super Bowl XLIX

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By @petahrahgas

Super Bowl XLIX New England Patriots Seattle Seahawks

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Super Bowl XLIX is in four days. Four days, that’s 96 hours away from the biggest sports event in the country. Do you feel like we are on the brink of a Super Bowl? I sure don’t.

Between deflated footballs, ESPN taking “reporting” to a whole other level, scientists and non-scientists talking about PSI, Bill Belichick enjoying puppets you can manipulate and now Marshawn Lynch deciding that doing his job isn’t part of his job, it seems the NFL has no time for the actual event that we all want to see.

Where are the discussions of how will Tom Brady and the New England Patriots’ offense match up against Seattle Seahawks’ Legion of Boom? Where’s the previewing of the Patriots’ struggling run defense against the ever elusive (both on the field and off) Lynch? Basically, where is the NFL’s analysis of the biggest event of their season?

This is the Super Bowl matchup everyone has dreamed of. It’s the next dynasty vs. the current dynasty. It’s Richard Sherman vs. Darrelle Revis. It’s young Russell Wilson taking on veteran Tom Brady. It’s Pete Carroll coaching against his old team. This Super Bowl has every storyline a football fan could possibly ask for, yet the NFL isn’t filling the internet with hype and anticipation.

Instead all we can talk about is Deflate-gate and now Lynch’s inability to speak with the media. Why? Why is the NFL seemingly ignoring the Super Bowl?

They’re trying to save face.

To say 2014 was a rough year for Roger Goodell and the NFL is a very large understatement. Enough bad stuff has happened to the league this year to fill a “Weird Al” Yankovic parody of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ entitled ‘NFL’s Under Fire’. Goodell is trying desperately to find a way to get back into America’s good graces, and it seems these latest scandals have given him the opportunity.

Instead of quietly handling Deflate-gate inside the league like any respectable organization would do, the NFL has been leaking out news on the scandal every few days to keep the public interested and focused on the wrongdoing the Patriots did. (And when I say “did” I mean might have done since there is still no evidence the Patriots did anything.) The NFL needed a villain to take the public’s wrath away from Goodell and his inexplicable inability to get a video tape, and they seemingly have found one in Belichick and Brady.

The NFL has also taken a fixation on forcing Lynch into the media spotlight to see both what crazy phrase he’ll take to saying (my personal favorite is “I’m just here so I won’t get fined”) and then concocting some way to still fine him.

These are the topics the NFL is choosing to focus on the week before the biggest sporting event in the country. Why isn’t the NFL sweeping all this under the rug and focusing on showing off the Super Bowl? Why is the NFL choosing to focus on these negatives rather than trying to remind the public how much fun football is and how awesome this year’s Super Bowl will be?

Goodell is hoping that the general football fan has a very short attention span and by bombarding them with current scandals — if you can call under-inflated footballs and one player’s disdain for talking to the media scandals — they will forget all about Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, both Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald, how the NFL still hasn’t really made that much progress on head trauma and of course Goodell’s immense incompetence.

That’s why the NFL isn’t hyping up the Super Bowl; the NFL doesn’t actually talk about football anymore. They’re focused on covering up their past wrongs and forcing homemade scandals down America’s throats. So prepare for a long four days so void of Super Bowl talk that you’ll forget there’s even a game this Sunday.

Peter Rogers is a New England Patriots writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @petahrahgas, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google

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