Football season is in full swing, but these are such strange days that even of game day, Americans can no longer put their political differences aside to enjoy the savage ballet. Yes, the National Football League has once again become a flashpoint in the endless, maddening culture wars—and surprisingly, the NFL seems to be on the “woke” side of the board.
Right now, there’s a lot of misinformation being spread about the game, the league, and the personalities within. Here are some of the biggest I’ve encountered.
Did Andy Reid refuse pledge to not attend the 2026 Super Bowl over a planned Charlie Kirk tribute?
The questionable Facebook pages of both Kollam’s Media and Together We Rise both recently claimed that Andy Reid, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, “ignited one of the most explosive controversies in sports history” when he refused to attend the 2026 Super Bowl because of a tribute to Charlie Kirk planned for the opening ceremonies. But that didn’t happen. There are multiple levels of deception at work here. First, we have no reason to think that the NFL has planned its opening ceremonies this early, and if they have, there’s no reason they would have shared them with Andy Reid anyway. So it follows that Reid did not preemptively announce a boycott of the 2026 Super Bowl, and there is no evidence of him doing so aside from those Facebook posts.
It is true that Reid most likely won’t be attending the Super Bowl this year: His team is currently battling the Raiders for third place in a four-team division.
Did Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson, and George Strait refuse to perform a Charlie Kirk tribute at Super Bowl 2026?
Together We Rise’s Facebook page is evidently on the cutting edge of fake stories about the Super Bowl and Charlie Kirk, as another post there reports Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton, George Strait, Vince Gill, and Reba McEntire all declined to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show over a planned tribute to Charlie Kirk. But again, there is no known “tribute to Charlie Kirk” planned for the Super Bowl, and the performer for halftime is Bad Bunny anyway, meaning there’s nothing for this random cadre of vaguely left-leaning country artists to boycott.
Did Coca-Cola pull its sponsorship of the 2026 halftime show?
Speaking of Bad Bunny, according to a Facebook post from PR Informa, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey responded to the announcement of Bad Bunny’s halftime gig by pledging, “I will end my sponsorship of the Super Bowl if they let Bad Bunny to perform at halftime.” Quincey never said this, and Coca-Cola hasn’t advertised during the Super Bowl since since 2020 anyway. All the advertising has been purchased already for the game, and no company has announced plans to pull out over Bad Bunny’s performance, nor for any other reason.
Did Carlos Santana object to Bad Bunny playing at the Super Bowl?
Despite post circulating on social media suggesting music icon Carlos Santana objected to Bad Bunny playing the Super Bowl, it’s just not true. Santana addressed the rumor on his own Facebook page, posting, “Fear is the flavor right now. Fear is what motivates ignorant people to put words in my mouth—saying that I didn’t want Bad Bunny to be represented at the Super Bowl. I never said that, nor would I ever.”
Is the NFL considering pulling Bad Bunny’s halftime show?
When asked about the rumors that the NFL was considering pulling Bad Bunny from the 2026 halftime show, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear the league stands behind Bad Bunny. “He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world,” Goodell told ESPN. “I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism.”
Did Travis Kelce sue Karoline Leavitt, buy a diner for homeless people, and announce he impregnated Taylor Swift?
Travis Kelce did not sue Karoline Leavitt, buy a diner for homeless people, or announce that he and Taylor Swift are having a child. He didn’t donate his bonus to a homeless non-profit, threaten to “twist Elon Musk into a pretzel,” or rent out Disneland for a day. Dude’s just a football player, damn. That Kelce is a center for misinformation is clearly because he’s among the highest profile players out there, he has a high-profile fiancée, and he doesn’t completely hide his political views. Not that Kelce is anything like an activist, but having done a commercial encouraging people to get vaccinated is enough to put a celebrity in certain crosshairs.
The Super Bowl is rigged in favor of…
This is a preemptive debunking: We don’t yet know who is going to be in the big game, but when we find out, there are bound to be conspiracy theories suggesting the game is being rigged in favor of one team, for whatever reason. But as far as we know, the Super Bowl hasn’t been rigged in the past, and it probably won’t be this time, either. Remember: Last season’s pre-Super Bowl rumor was the game would be fixed in favor of The Chiefs, and it didn’t exactly work out that way.
Why is football suddenly so controversial?
Maybe I’m looking at the past with astroturf-colored glasses, but football used to be something like a shared national pastime. Sure, there were a ton of false beliefs about the game out there, but they were things like, “The refs cheat,” or “The Raiders are a lock.” It didn’t matter whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, we all laughed at the Jets. But like every other cultural event or institution, football is also being sorted into Team Red and Team Blue, neither of which has attractive jerseys. It’s such a drag that we can’t just enjoy the circus without someone turning it into the next political crisis.
Original Source: https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/football-rumor-round-up-what-people-are-getting-wrong-this-week?utm_medium=RSS
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