NFL Fumbles Super Bowl Opportunity
There is no denying the National Football League (NFL) is a juggernaut $20 billion dollar industry, expanding into new markets—including girls flag football, where it hopes to “make girls flag football a varsity sport in all 50 states.”
That desire to expand football to girls and the NFL’s decision to replace the words “End Racism” with the words “Choose Love” had all the makings of an opportunity to bring a host of people together for all sorts of reasons and extend the good will of the brand, showing how our nation’s sons and men are supporting women’s sports.
Instead, the commercial the NFL aired last Super Bowl Sunday fell into the social and political trappings that created the same controversy when Gillette razor ran its toxic masculinity commercial in 2019. The NFL’s commercial is equally patronizing and perhaps worse because it did not embrace what is actually happening on high school campuses where boys are supportive of girls’ sports.
The commercial begins with a balding middle-aged white-male, a likely high school principal, abused by a black male who sticks a kick-me sign on the principal’s back and proceeds to kick his ass: the principal, of course, being the symbolic and clownish representation of authoritative patriarchy.
The camera then turns its attention to a group of football players entering the school with their lettermen jackets, the most obnoxious being the toxic, sexist, white football star, Chad, striding forward with his fellow multi-racial sexists in tow.
When a group of female cheerleaders notice a new black female student (played by actual high school flag football superstar, Ki-Lolo Westerlund) in a football jersey, one cheerleader pulls out her best mean-girl spirit and asks, “Ew! What is she wearing?”
The commercial then leads to a mockery of the female athlete with an obnoxious “girls don’t play football” comment from the sexist Chad. He throws a football at her that she catches with one hand, returning the throw and hitting one of the other lettermen in his manly region, knocking the wind out of him. Was it an attempt to create, I suppose, a low-testosterone male that was all the rage this political season?
The commercial continues with the female flag-football star showing-up the muscular mullet-wearing Brad, an allusion to the Dads, Brads, and Chads comment Taylor Swift made about angry football fans who don’t like her at games for reasons that are more political than sexist.
In a series of impressive moves, the female flag-football star hurdles sexism, racism, patriarchy, and engages in political activism one move at a time. The 1980s throwback commercial that tells us to “leave the past behind” seems to echo the sentiments of, perhaps, Kamala Harris’s “we’re not going back” comment made on the campaign trail numerous times.
In truth, boys are overwhelmingly positive about girls’ sports and in many instances the boys and girls are often dating and attending each other’s games and cheering each other on.
Men account for a large number of flag football coaches, approximately 85% according to Zippia. While some will try to present the high number of male coaches as another glass ceiling to break, it’s critical to realize that the majority of flag football coaches are volunteers and football has been a male sport for decades because of its extremely physical nature. Football was a sport originally designed to build a certain roughness in men who may, one day, need to go off and fight in wars.
Football was originally created in the mid-19th century, and after undergoing many changes, became a popular sport on college campuses in the years leading up to World War I. The first Army-Navy football game was played in 1890. By 1917, when the United States entered WWI, football had been played by many of the young men entering military training camps around the U.S. (National WWI Museum and Memorial).
But Flag football offers a new and competitive category of the game that appeals to boys and girls. It makes sense that men are coaches, many who played the game and are likely coaching their daughters. Supportive dads were affectionately called girl-dads during the 2024 election. Why are fathers girl-dads when they support abortion but not girl-dads when they coach flag football?
Girls flag football is now a varsity sport in 14 states with at least another 17 states running pilot programs. This enterprise would not be possible without the help of dads and other men who bring their football knowledge to the game to help the girls who will go on to become coaches in the future, probably for their sons and daughters.
The NFL could have offered up a better commercial with some humor and actually intensified the momentousness of girls flag football with a well-respected principal dropping a comment to a group of girls walking down the hall, “big game today.” Boys in lettermen jackets talking about the big game and leaving the impression of it being the boys’ game, only to offer up an ironic plot twist with them and millions of Super Bowl viewers cheering on Ki-Lolo and all the other girls as they throw passes, make great moves, and impress us with their athleticism. Because, that is what is actually happening on high school campuses. Girls and boys are supporting one another.
The last fifteen seconds (or about 13% of the ad) is positive and encourages us to support girls flag football across the U.S., a fairly easy sell.
Some will suggest the Super Bowl ad was meant to be humorous, but it felt so much more like a spiteful political reaction to the 2024 election and a reliance on oppressor-oppressed narratives that fill the landscape of modern media, and one we are likely to see more of instead of the bold and momentous opportunity to choose love.
Misandry on parade. Showing the unbelievable dominance of girls over boys in sports is a delusional act of buying into girl power in a place where it simply does not exist. Boys as young as 14 beat the women's world record in a number of areas. Let's give boys their due in arenas where they excel. https://menaregood.substack.com/p/men-women-sports-and-gynocentrism
Agree the methods fell into the typical ‘males bad’ stereotype. The groin hit also seemed unnecessary, but this again falls into the accepted violence toward men that is brushed off as a funny event. Ultimately, I will have a hard time supporting this movement as it would be better served as a ‘flag football for all’ approach. Such a safety and health risk gap exists between the 2 sports. Just like we allow women to play full kit football in school (think mainly just as kickers currently), we should have flag football open to ALL interested kids regardless of gender.