Today is Super Bowl Sunday.  Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos, possessor of one Super Bowl ring, has played for eighteen seasons and is thirty-nine years old.  Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers has played for five seasons and is twenty-six.  The news media, sports and others, always want something attention-grabbing to focus on, even if they sound ridiculous dwelling on it.  From what I've heard lately, the big story of this Super Bowl is Cam Newton's enthusiasm on the field.  When he throws a touchdown pass, or runs into the end zone, he makes a big show of expressing his happiness.  Little dances, stylized moves, the football always going to some child in the end zone cheap seats.  Newton's celebratory behavior strikes some as excessive and others as flagrant.  That NFL players have been celebrating their best plays within games for decades seems to have been forgotten by those condemning Cam Newton.
     I remember watching games in the 1970s and nobody in those years spiked the football in the end zone after a score.  That would garner a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.  I began to get the impression that almost anything could be done in a touchdown celebration when I saw Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson finish his interception run with a leap in the end zone and a toss of the football through the uprights.  The act seemed to me to be the most disrespectful thing a player could do to an opposing team, but now, such behavior is common, even encouraged by a culture that celebrates its athletes in a sport providing the "blood" in the old blood and circuses concept of ancient Roman rule.  Keep the people happy with entertainment of a vivid quality and offer goods to purchase.  Voila, the Super Bowl, a perfect blend of sports entertainment and capitalism, overflown by military airpower right before the game along with a rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."
     Peyton Manning, off the field, shills for Papa John's Pizza, has donated thousands of dollars to Republican politicians, is a committed Christian, is white, and more than does his part to represent the NFL in combination with the money-making pizza I've never seen him eat.
     Cam Newton, a black man, gets criticized for doing his own kind of on-field celebrations after scoring and making big plays; doing what hundreds of other NFL players have done, do, and will do.  Manning presents a grim game face, while Newton expresses joy at playing the game he most loves.    Those who find Newton's antics unsavory should reconsider the NFL run by Roger Goodell:
     Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice slugged his girlfriend in the face on an elevator, and then dragged her unconscious body out into a lobby, both actions caught on surveillance cameras.  Goodell and other higher-ups had access to police reports and could've requested the elevator video but didn't.  Later, when the elevator video was released showing the star running back impacting his girlfriend's face, making her drop like a rock to the floor, Goodell had to increase Rice's game suspension from two to six.  Assaulting a woman merits six missed games in Goodell's organization.
     Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers, later of the Cowboys, assaulted his girlfriend, knocking her back onto a couch covered with assault weapons.  He didn't go to jail, he just went to Dallas, which, considering the shittiness of the Cowboys for the past several years, was at least a small punishment, considering he had to leave the team favored to win today's Super Bowl.
     Roger Goodell, on February 5, asked in a press conference about the dangers of playing football, said, "There's risk in everything.  There's risk in sitting on the couch."
     If it's covered with assault weapons.
     Goodell, who, judging from his reluctance to punish Rice and Hardy by kicking them out of the NFL, doesn't care about women's well-being, has broken the overall football experience into two pieces: those who play the game and are endangered by it, and those who sit on their couches watching, also endangered, perhaps, by having to watch a happy black man express his enthusiasm when scoring, because that, not the hazards of the game, not the multi-million dollar commercial spots, not the game's weird association with nationalism, is what we should most fear: a member of an oppressed minority enjoying his success in a sport run by rich white men who ignored the danger of concussions even as some former players killed themselves.  None of them died because they sat on couches.

                                                                            Vic Neptune