Five political questions hanging over the Super Bowl

The year’s biggest sports event — and biggest TV extravaganza — is set for Sunday, as the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals battle it out in Super Bowl LVI.

The Bengals are seeking their first-ever Super Bowl win, while the Rams are hoping for their first title since 2000, back in the days when they were based in St. Louis.

The football heroics and mishaps will be center stage, but the big game is far from immune from some of the major political issues roiling the nation.

Here are the five biggest political issues that loom over the Super Bowl.

Racism

The NFL has sought to adopt a more progressive image in recent years, especially after the controversy regarding its initial response to the protests begun by Colin Kaepernick, then of the San Francisco 49ers, in 2016.

The NFL is under new scrutiny after former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a legal suit against the league, and three teams — the Dolphins, the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants — over alleged racist hiring practices.

Flores’s suit alleges the league remains “rife with racism” and that Black coaches often have to suffer through sham interviews when they have no real chance of getting the top job. 

A text exchange that Flores had with Bill Belichick, the most famous and controversial coach of the modern era, added extra force to that charge. 

In those texts, Belichick congratulated Flores on his imminent appointment as head coach of the New York Giants — only for it to become apparent as the exchange went on that the job, for which Flores was due to interview, was actually going to Brian Daboll, who is white. Belichick appears to have been texting Flores in error.

The NFL denies Flores’s allegations. But the fact of the matter is that, at the time the suit was filed, there was one Black head coach in a league where about 70 percent of the players are Black. Within days, Lovie Smith, who is Black, was hired as head coach of the Houston Texans.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said recently “We won’t tolerate racism.” 

But as the game’s biggest occasion looms, critics say that’s exactly what the league has been doing for years.

Trucker protests?

The trucker protests that are roiling Canada — and snarling border crossings — are virtually certain to spill over into the United States. Could they cause disruption to the Super Bowl?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned that they might.

The agency expressed concern in recent days that an American convoy modeled on the Canadian effort could begin in California “as early as mid-February…potentially impacting the Super Bowl LVI scheduled for 13 February.” 

According to a National Public Radio report Thursday, DHS has also been tracking activity on social media, including hashtags such as #ShutDownSuperBowl.

But Americans who sympathize with Canada’s so-called freedom convoy dismiss such rumors. 

They note that the most prominent plans for an American convoy are positing a later date, probably in early March, as a starting point. Disrupting the Super Bowl would also seem certain to cause a backlash, and would likely only lead opponents of the truckers to portray them as extremists.

Some law enforcement sources played down the gravity of the situation.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said on Wednesday that there was no “legitimacy” to the threat, according to Insider.

Sexual harassment

Football has been increasingly under scrutiny in the nation’s capital and even in the halls of Congress — in part because of the controversies embroiling the Washington football team, now renamed the Washington Commanders.

The day after the new name was announced, several former employees of the organization testified before Congress about what they characterized as a pervasive atmosphere of sexual harassment.

Similar accusations, from an even larger number of employees, had been reported by The Washington Post in 2020, spurring an investigation by the NFL. 

Ultimately, the league fined the Washington team $10 million and Goodell cited a “highly unprofessional” atmosphere that was especially damaging to women.

The former employees who spoke before Congress want the full results of that investigation to be made public. The league contends that the release of more detailed findings would transgress privacy rights.

The recent congressional testimony included new direct allegations of harassment by the Commanders’ owner, Daniel Snyder. Snyder has shot back that those charges constitute “outright lies.”

Now, the NFL says it will mount a new investigation about those specific allegations.

Meanwhile, some Democratic members of Congress are holding the team up as a prime example of a toxic workplace.

The Washington football team was never challenging for a berth in the Super Bowl this year, but the murkiness that surrounds it will percolate through to the big game.

COVID-19 and its impacts

The nation is in a much better place on the pandemic than it was a year ago when attendance at the Super Bowl was capped at 25,000 people — the smallest-ever crowd for the event.

But there will still be restrictions in place at the SoFi stadium. The vast majority of spectators will have to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test result in order to watch the game — only children under 5 will be exempt.

Mask-wearing will be even more strict — in theory. Everyone in the crowd, except for infants under the age of 2, is supposed to wear a mask unless they are eating or drinking. In practice, however, that exemption has been very liberally applied at other big sporting events. 

The Super Bowl is giving a lot of Angelenos COVID-19 anxiety, too. A recent Los Angeles Times/Survey Monkey poll indicated that almost two-thirds of residents of the area think it is either “very” or “somewhat” likely that the Super Bowl will be a super-spreader event.

The same poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans nationwide would watch the Super Bowl either alone or with fewer people than normal because of COVID-19 fears.

The pandemic has, of course, had enormous impact economically as well. A massive shift toward internet commerce and away from socializing has meant Americans are spending more money on goods and less on services like travel and eating out. 

The clogs in the supply chain that have resulted have helped fuel inflation — and caused serious trouble for President Biden.

One thing to watch will be the extent to which Super Bowl ads — many of which have come with a price tag of $7 million for 30 seconds this year — reflect those new economic realities.

Polarization

The NFL itself has found itself in the center of political controversy in recent years.

That was especially true during former President Trump’s tenure, when he blasted the players who took a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired!’” Trump famously said during a rally in Alabama in 2017.

Trump would subsequently gloat about NFL ratings declining, thorough he often exaggerated the drop-off.

At one level, the former president’s attacks appear to have had some effect. The Los Angeles Times/Survey Monkey poll found that about half of Republican voters said their interest in the NFL had declined over the past five years, while only about one-quarter of Democratic voters felt the same way.

Yet, even with all that being said, football — and the Super Bowl in particular — is a national, communal experience unlike almost anything else in this fractured time. Last year, even with the atmosphere muted by COVID-19, more than 90 million Americans watched the game. This year, the ratings will likely be higher still.

Millions of Americans of divergent political loyalties might experience some common pain too — about 31 million Americans are expected to place a bet on this year’s Super Bowl.