Breaking Down Super Bowl LI’s Winners & Losers, But Mostly Losers

The 2016 season is coming to its momentous conclusion, and the National Football League is preparing to play a championship game--a strong break with previous tradition, wherein the two best teams would go out to brunch and bill the two worst teams.

You don’t want to look like you don’t have any idea what’s going on, so here’s a quick guide to the sights, sounds and smells of Sunday:

Wait, what’s going on?

It’s the Super Bowl! On FOX! Instead of all-new episodes of “The Simpsons,” “Son of Zorn,” “Family Guy,” and “Bob’s Burgers.”

Where is it happening?

Houston, Texas, which is the largest city in the U.S. with no Equal Rights ordinance for LGBT people. In 2015, Proposition 1--which would have held up the city’s HERO act and banned discrimination on (among other issues) the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity--failed to pass in a city-wide referendum. As a direct consequence of this regressive action, the NFL announced absolutely nothing, and Houston Texans owner Bob McNair offered thrillingly quiet regret by donating $10,000 towards the proposition’s defeat.

The NFL’s strong statement let fans know that whether you’re straight or gay, don’t be gay. The game will be played at NRG Stadium, named for the energy company NRG Energy, on a field field.

Which one is it again?

Super Bowl LI.

Why don’t they just say 51?

Arabic numerals on the Fox network? Read any other article on this website.

Okay, so what are the rules?

Teams compete to attract the best talent by artificially suppressing movement of free labor through a draft process tied to a salary scale, the salaries being non-guaranteed past a suggested signing bonus, and players can be removed from their contracts at any time. Team coaches must encourage their players to unspeakably wreck their bodies in an average career length of 3.3 years through a combination of threats to their job, human growth hormones, deliberately disobeying the requests of powerless independent physicians, and toxic masculinity.

Players advance a ball as far as they can until a series of commercial breaks and must stay “in-bounds” at all times. If they offer personal opinions about the inherent dangers of the game or the culture of the fandom that watches it, they are no longer “sticking to sports” and are thus out-of-bounds, whereupon they lose all of their endorsements.

It is loosely based on a child’s game.

Why are the players all wearing helmets?

To minimize their individuality and sublimate themselves to the team, which is exactly why all the coaches, general managers, and owners do the same, along with the media analysts, as well. Helmets also shield the brain from dangerous cognitive dissonance related to the messaging that football is a “safe game” and the litany of destroyed and suppressed evidence to the contrary suggested by the decade’s worth of lawsuits against the league.

Okay, who’s doing the halftime show?

The Super Bowl Halftime has been a major event since 1992, when the competing “Doritos Zaptime/’In Living Color’ Super Halftime Party” took a big bite out of Super Bowl XXVI’s audience, a “Winter Magic” show where 1970s and 80s Olympians figure skated on Teflon platforms. The league responded the following year by hiring Michael Jackson alongside a Los Angeles children's choir. That is all true.

This year’s halftime act is Lady Gaga, and in a testament to her talent, the NFL did not ask her to pay money to perform at the event, as they have done in years past to Rihanna, Katy Perry and Coldplay. If you feel that perhaps the NFL might have enough money in this whole endeavour, as they own the parking lots the day-of, can remove ATMs from the stadium that do not take pre-approved NFL credit and debit cards and can order a portable cell tower at a team hotel and bill the city for it, well, perhaps you haven’t met the person who would ask for these things.

Who’s the guy holding the trophy?

Unless Tom Brady and his MAGA hat come within twenty yards, that guy is Roger Goodell, Commissioner and Boy-King. Goodell rose from the ranks of humble senator’s son...to his job!

Player safety is his big thing, which is why he pushed for lengthening the season by 12.5% and refused to pay referees a full-time salary. He’s also in charge of the policy that suspends players for a year for marijuana use, but just a couple of weeks for beating women. For all of these issues, he prefers to be the arbiter in cases between the league and its players, and, if need be, the arbiter if there’s an appeal.

As you might guess, Roger’s not too popular right now. The owners have cut his pay again, so now he’s only made $175 million in salary over the last five years, just $3 million more than Bob Kraft paid for the actual New England Patriots franchise in 1994. Roger’s married to a former Fox News anchor, because of-fucking-course.

Alright, just tell me...who will win?

The almighty dollar is unbeaten and currently favored.

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Sean Sullivan performs with "Baby Wants Candy," Saturday nights at 9pm in Judy's Beat Lounge at The Second City Training Center.