Super Bowl 50 has got everything – apart from a true villain to...

Super Bowl 50 has got everything – apart from a true villain to hate
No Brady, no Belichick, no Ray Lewis and his deer antler spray: this year’s Super Bowl features just two really good football teams – and not a villain in sight


Cam Newton is definitely not a villain, despite some what readers of the Charlotte Observer might think. Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP
DJ Gallo
Wednesday 3 February 2016 01.10 AEDTLast modified on Wednesday 3 February 201601.14 AEDT
Super Bowl 50 has almost everything. The game will feature the top-seeded team from the NFC versus the No1 team in the AFC. It will have two great defenses.

And it will showcase an aging quarterback legend trying to win what could be his last game against a team led by the best quarterback of the younger generation. There’s nothing there not to like.

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But there is something big missing from Super Bowl 50.

No, not Roman numerals. You Roman numeral diehards had your XLIX years in the sun and now it’s over. The Roman numeral empire has fallen. It’s time to accept that.

What Super Bowl 50 is missing is a villain. All epic dramas have a villain and Panthers-Broncos is unfortunately lacking one.

“But Cam Newton!”
No. Cam Newton is not a true villain.

Sure, he may be one among a very vocal minority of angry people on your Facebook feed, in the Letters to the Editor section of the Charlotte Observer and to our more hopelessly washed-up sportswriters.

But to the vast majority of the country, he’s a good quarterback who enjoys playing football. We as a society can’t give the “villain” title to everyone who is hated by angry people on Facebook.

If we do, everyone must be called a villain because people on Facebook generally despise all things.
Peyton Manning is not the villain either.

If this was baseball, sure – December’s HGH allegation would result in the future Hall of Famer getting booed in every stadium he steps into. And I wouldn’t have used the term “future Hall of Famer” in the previous sentence, as he would forever marked with a scarlet HGH.

But this is football. Fans either don’t care about banned substances or don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) Manning took any. Right or wrong, Manning will be the subject of countless tributes and media paeans this week. Not exactly the stuff of villains.

So, then, who do we turn to for the villain role?

Last year we had the New England Patriots playing under the Deflategate allegations and, more importantly, they were the Patriots: football’s premier villain.

The year before that we had Richard Sherman, whose vocal trashing of an opponent is, without question, far more disrespectful than all of Cam Newton’s celebratory dances combined.

The Super Bowl before that, it was Ray Lewis and his deer antler spray. And IV years ago we had the Patriots again. Go back IV or XLIX Super Bowls and, in most of them, there’s been a team or a player in the villain role. There’s been someone to root against.

Even a coach will do. In many recent Super Bowls, Bill Belichick has been cast in the dark lord role quite well. Three years ago we had the Harbaugh bros, who are both punchable in their own way.

But Super Bowl 50 has Gary Kubiak and Ron Rivera. Kubiak seems like your good-natured and straight-laced uncle or high school gym teacher and the only scandalous thing

Ron Rivera has ever done is pose for a picture with his Chicago BARES teammates. It gets even worse below the head coach level.

Denver defensive coordinator Wade Phillips might be the nicest, most human man in all of football.

He’s someone you feel the need to openly root for, not against. How awful.

The fanbases don’t help much either. Despite Denver playing in its eighth Super Bowl all-time, tied for the most with the Cowboys, Patriots and Steelers, its fans aren’t loathed to the same degree as the supporters of other successful franchises.

Granted, Raiders, Chargers and Chiefs fans may disagree with that statement. But compare the schadenfreude-fueled glee felt from sea to shining sea when the Patriots are eliminated from the postseason to the national mood when the Broncos lose.

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There’s no sense that spontaneous celebrations could break out anywhere at any moment.

Maybe it’s because the Broncos have only won two Super Bowls, and none in 17 years, so the envy factor isn’t there.

Or maybe it’s because Denver isn’t in a huge, coastal media market that constantly bombards the rest of the country with profiles of their fans’ supposed superiority.

Or maybe it’s because when we think of Broncos fans, we don’t picture someone who is smug and obnoxious, but a shirtless man trapped inside a barrel.

It’s pretty hard to hate a shirtless man trapped in a barrel.

The Panthers simply haven’t been around long enough for anyone to get a good dislike going for them. In 20 years of play before this season, Carolina made one Super Bowl and was quarterbacked in it by

Jake Delhomme, making the general feeling towards Panthers fans a mix between apathy and pity. (And, among more geographically challenged fans, also probably some confusion as to where this “Carolina” place even is.)

Of course, all of this could change by the end of Super Bowl 50. The more jealous among us will no doubt quickly grow to despise the fans and players of the winning team. “Panthers fans are a bunch of bandwagoners!”

Or: “I’m so sick of the Broncos being in every postseason!” And some player could do or say something in the lead up to the game that turns us all against him.

Maybe there’s a Eugene Robinson somewhere in these likable rosters. But for now, pre-kickoff, the Broncos and Panthers are just two really good football teams set to play the biggest game of the year.

Nothing more, nothing less, nothing villainous.

Without a true villain, we may all just have to watch the game strictly for the love of sport and competition and entertainment. It feels weird, but I guess I’m willing to give it a try. Just this once.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/02/super-bowl-50-broncos-panthers-no-villain