The best and worst moments of Super Bowl 2022

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 The Rams beat the Bengals, Meadow and AJ Soprano reunited, and the NFL hopes that everyone will forget about the league's problems overnight.

Over the past few weeks, professional football, one of the images shared in the rest of the country's mass media, has been vibrant, gruesome, consuming all of it. First, there's a string of thrilling playoffs, rife with wilds: confusing lead changes, unhandled midfield hits, fouls squirming around the pitch and scoring. freestyle until the very last seconds, sometimes, the smaller men performed on the shoulders of the larger men in victory.

But the competition on the field is only part of the reason football keeps the national psyche. The two-week gap between the convention championships and the Super Bowl delivered the rest of the movie. Tom Brady, a winger that wins with time, has announced his retirement - even though he never uttered the word "R" and made it sound like a dating show breakup, writing, " I will no longer make that competitive commitment. (There's also the awkwardness of not mentioning his ex, Bill Belichick.) Brian Flores, the successful but recently fired head coach of the Miami Dolphins, has filed a civil lawsuit against the NFL, Alleged that the organization discriminated against Black applicants for head coaching and executive positions. In the lawsuit, Flores also claims that the owner of the Dolphins, Stephen Ross, offered him one hundred thousand dollars for every game the team lost in 2019, to break the Dolphins' record and enough conditions for better draft selection. (Ross has denied this.) The Washington football team, formerly the Redskins, before that slang eventually became untenable, announced its new name: The Commanders. The next day, a former employee of the group alleges that she was sexually harassed by Washington's owner, Daniel Snyder. (A year ago, following an investigation into other harassment allegations brought against the team, the NFL claimed that Washington operated a "very unprofessional" workplace; Snyder described the most recent request. against him was a "utter lie".) A few days later, Aaron Rodgers, a self-described "critical thinker" who was fined earlier this season for violating his covid protocols. tournament , was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

The lawsuit and workplace allegations will lead to a crisis for a sports federation or other major corporation. Not so for the NFL, however, which continues to profit despite notoriety and outrage and controversy. However, there was certainly some relief at league headquarters with the arrival of the Super Bowl, a match that fans - and more importantly, gamblers - can reasonably be sure of. reasoned that neither the Los Angeles Rams nor the Cincinnati Bengals would attempt to lose on purpose.

The Rams won Sunday, inside the multibillion-dollar SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood, California, where the weather both outside and inside was warm, dry and generally enviable back from the East. The game follows football's special formula — even an uncomfortable game often becomes supercharged late in the game, with the defense playing soft and tight, and the fouls seemingly invigorating. by limited time. After the Rams marched down the field to advance, with one minute and 25 seconds remaining in the fourth inning, the Bengals' offense quickly shifted in the other direction, and looked poised at least within range of a game. play -tying the target field. The race stalled instead, and finished fourth and first in midfield, when the Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (second arrival by Joe Namath, we were told on Monday) last week) was forced to flip the ball gently forward when he was attacked by the Rams' Aaron Donald slamming the defence. It's an appropriate way to win: Donald has played all eight of his professional seasons with the Rams, barely missed a game and is the team's all-time leader. Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, who spent years pitching big numbers to teams that mostly lost in Detroit before being transferred to LA, for the season, is a redeemed veteran. When he got down on his knees to run out of time, the crowd went - well, not quite as wild.

Until last season, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did just that, no team had ever played in a home Super Bowl. This year, thanks to another foray into fortune-telling, the Rams became the hosts. However, since moving back to Southern California, from St. Louis, in 2016 the Rams' home games tend to feel less like home, with the majority of the crowd often playing in the opposing team's colors. That's how it went in the NFC championship game, against the San Francisco 49ers, and so it was again on Sunday, with an orange Bengals in the stands. The great plays by both teams were met with what could best be described as the same vaguely mixed noise, joy and sorrow. The only time the crowd seemed uniformly happy was during the great break. Meanwhile, like some divorced billionaires, the Rams, the current winners by all popular definitions, look a little lonely in their glittering new palace.

Speaking of lonely rich people, this year's TV commercial features the customary parade of stars. But some brand pairs have raised more questions about celebrity motivations than consumer interest. Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost seem to have completed a cute little deal for Amazon. Both Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, who was peddling Lay's, looked like they ate french fries, too. And does Larry David, the king of distributed checks, really need crypto? Chevy's Meadow and AJ's reunion, which spanned the universe of "The Sopranos" for another fifteen years, has found a receptive audience on Twitter, if only because it brings new facts to the contest big talk about the show's finale. Budweiser used a cute pup and an injured Clydesdale to try to say something about the various messes of the moment— “In the house of the brave, down never meant pass” — although, at this point, each part of that line will have very different meanings to the other. Or nothing to anyone. The flashiest commercials of the night also offer the hottest escapist: a cinematic Michelob Ultra location set at a bowling alley, with a mixed vibe of “The Big Lebowski,” “Dazed and Confused” " and "Jackie Brown". It stars several famous athletes, and ends with Serena Williams in a purple Turturro performing her best anti-Pam Grier move. It's safe to say we'd rather be there than anywhere right now.

The Rams' wide receiver Cooper Kupp, who captured the game's winning touchdown, was named the game's most valuable player. During the post-game ceremony, he said, "I don't feel worthy of this." Modesty and politeness — admirable as his immense talent, but a bit discordant for the NFL Not quite right. This Super Bowl's more fitting face may be arguably the most undervalued player. Near the end of the first half, Bengals cornerback Vernon Hargreaves, who was inactive for the game, was flagged for a penalty for unsporting behavior after he ran onto the pitch wearing sandals and a hoodie. , to celebrate an interception with his teammates. and cup for the camera. The broadcast then showed him back on the bench, with a sheepish look on his face. He was the star of a perfect football moment - from a combination of pomp, shamelessness and oblivion, he was there, the rules and taste were damned, right in the center of everything. The American Way.

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