To the Editor:
The National Football League loves to wrap itself in the language of family values. It markets football as wholesome Americana: Sunday gatherings, kids in jerseys, patriotism, and community. But that branding collapses when the league turns around and puts a performer like Bad Bunny on the biggest stage in sports.
The Super Bowl Halftime Show isn’t a late-night concert; it’s a nationally televised event watched by families and children. Yet what viewers were given was vulgarity packaged as “art”: Sexually charged choreography, men gyrating on men, and women twerking in a display that looked less like entertainment and more like shock value. If this is the NFL’s idea of “inclusive family programming,” then the phrase has lost all meaning.
You can’t preach responsibility, discipline, and role-model behavior to young fans while celebrating performances that openly mock modesty and restraint. The hypocrisy is obvious. Either the league believes in the values it claims to uphold, or it should stop pretending and admit that profit and cultural signaling matter more than families.
For many viewers, the spectacle felt less like entertainment and more like a modern echo of Sodom and Gomorrah; a celebration of excess with no concern for the audience it was being pushed onto. If the NFL wants to be honest, it needs to choose: Family-friendly standards, or anything-goes spectacle. It can’t credibly claim both.
Al Sicard
Dunnellon