I can’t say that I’m a huge follower of The Ravens or The 49ers, but I will admit to being a self-proclaimed (kind of crazy) conspiracy theorist with a strong suspicion of corporate greed. My suspicion arose when the power went out after Beyoncé’s performance, which proved that no man or woman can deny that the goddess that is Beyonce still has it. Ask yourself - would the Super Bowl really not be prepared with back up generators for their back up generators? This game is one of the biggest advertising, entertainment, and news events of the year. The power went out for not just a few minutes, but over half an hour!
This leads me to my next observation. After the halftime show, the 49ers miraculously stopped embarrassing themselves and created the movie worthy comeback full of fumbles and quick touchdowns to get 17 points in barely 4 minutes. This all escalated to a nail biting last play, 4th down to goal in the end zone which ended with Crabtree falling a little short (if we’re not taking into account the non-call…but that’s a whole other rant).
After this picked up second half, I began to question if this was a little too good to be true. I know many people were losing their attention spans by halftime when the Ravens had their 21-6 lead. It makes sense; the NFL, advertisers, and corporations sponsoring the game noticed the same thing. Nobody wants to watch an easy-win Super Bowl game, right?
So there’s your conspiracy theory, football edition. The power outage was created to grab people’s attention, because if you're not going to have a memorable game, you might as well have something interesting. The majestic catch up might be inspirational to athletes, coaches, and 49ers fans around the world, but to an outside observer, it just seemed way too much like a Friday Night Lights scenario. We got a more exciting game and big spenders, corporations, and supporters got more bang for their buck.
Who knows if any of this is reasonable or true. I definitely would still like to believe that there’s integrity and honesty in corporate-run sports, but I can't ignore the little voice in my ear saying ‘this is working out way too perfectly’. However, I will leave on a positive note, saying thankfully that game turned out to be as exciting as it was anticipated to be. Staged or not, athletes on both teams didn’t fail to impress; and lets be honest, as shady as Ray Lewis is, we all secretly wanted him to leave with another ring.
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