Other than the stinker put up by the Kansas City Chiefs offense on Sunday, the worst performance of the Super Bowl might have come from the NFL itself.
In a two-minute ad (in a game where the cost of just 30 seconds started at $7 million, according to USA Today), the league pushed its campaign to make flag football a varsity-level sport in every state around the country.
It was woke. It was full of “grrrl-power,” and the social media reaction showed it fell flatter than Patrick Mahomes in an Eagles pass rush.
For non-Super Bowl viewers, or those who had better things to do at that particular point of Sunday’s “contest” between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles (the 40-22 thumping wasn’t even as close as that score implies) the ad is below:
The NFL’s girls flag football commercial could hardly be more out of touch. Its now-dated, DEI-laden premise of a black girlboss running circles around a fit male like “The Matrix” doesn’t fool anyone: Brad would accidentally cripple her. #SuperBowlLIX
pic.twitter.com/M7A4SEfkK8— Rev. Ben Johnson (@TheRightsWriter) February 10, 2025
The idea, as the advertising industry trade publication Adweek pointed out, was to use the idea of spoofing a high school comedy from the ’80s, then updating the action into the woke, enlightened world of the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.
It has its share of former NFL stars. As Adweek noted, among them were former NFL kicker and punter Pat McAfee, a current ESPN commentator with generally ESPN politics) and former running back Marshawn Lynch — who’s no favorite of fans of President Donald Trump.
Did you enjoy this year’s Super Bowl?
It has women’s flag football players, including one from the national team, according to Adweek. (Three bonus points to any reader who was aware there even was a national flag football team.)
The problem is, the ad itself makes it clear that flag football is not “football” by any stretch.
And social media users noticed:
Girls are better at football than boys. I thought this ad was woke satire, it was that bad. NFL needs to fire the marketing team that made this, embarrassing: pic.twitter.com/CdimfdBR9W
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 10, 2025
Peak cringe
Commercials are still as woke as ever.
They still haven’t figured out that America rejected this BS back in November.
— Dissident West (@dissidentwest) February 10, 2025
Peak 2020 cringe
— Jon Del Arroz | Pop Culture & Gaming (@jondelarroz) February 10, 2025
The female protagonist is able to outmaneuver, outjump and outrun every man on the playing field precisely because there is none of the physical contact, the matching of physical strength against physical strength, that pretty much defines football.
This was a commercial to make people hate flag football https://t.co/C0VXsahYlq
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) February 10, 2025
What the ad amounts to is a racially tinged propaganda piece (the girl is black, virtually all of her male opponents are white) that pretends the game called flag football is as worthy of Americans’ attention as the actual helmets-and-pads-on-a-gridiron variety. (The WNBA has a better argument that it can compete with the NBA — and it can’t. And it couldn’t, even if every team had a Caitlin Clark.)
That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for the game of flag football. It’s got a spot in the 2028 Olympics, as CNN reported in 2023.
And why not? It’s never going to replace women’s beach volleyball — nothing will ever replace women’s beach volleyball — but it’s certainly not going to hurt anything. And it doesn’t leave much room to insult the whole idea of a sporting contest like, say, kangaroo-style breakdancing.
The problem with the ad’s argument was its feminist fantasy — trying to draw some sort of comparison between flag football and the real thing.
And in that, it was a bomb (though the Saquon Barkley-style leap it featured warmed the hearts of Eagles fans all over).
In fact, if it hadn’t been for the abysmal play of the Kansas City Chiefs, it would have been the worst thing about the night.
But unfortunately for Kansas City, and non-Eagles fans around the country, the Chiefs were there — all night long.
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