The teams taking the field in Sunday’s Super Bowl are of little interest to fans outside of New England or the Pacific Northwest, but the contest between competing halftime shows may make the big game at least remotely worth watching.

The NFL chose Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rap superstar with global appeal, as its headliner, sparking outrage from MAGA cultists who don’t know (or refuse to accept) that Puerto Rico is an American territory, making Bad Bunny an American citizen despite his brown skin and “radical leftist” penchant for singing in Spanish.

Turning Point USA — the “Christian-values” cash machine founded by the late Charlie Kirk and now run by his widow, Erika, as a post-assassination ATM — is countering Bad Bunny with a “family-friendly, patriotic alternative” headlined by Kid Rock.

Rock is a longtime Trump lickspittle who has seen his middling career as a white rapper/Lynyrd Skynyrd graverobber revived as a “Meth Elvis” for MAGA bootlickers. The TPUSA “event” will also feature Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett, three rhinestone stars of Corporate Country Radio most Americans have never heard or heard of. What, did the cantankerous remains of Ted Nugent turn down a slot?

Pop-punk pioneers Green Day will kick off the musical festivities at an official NFL opening ceremony. It’s a safe bet the San Francisco natives will play an updated version of “American Idiot,” their 2004 hit released when it seemed certain George “Dubya” Bush had a lifetime lock on the dubious distinction of worst president ever.

It’s doubtful that Kid Rock will perform his 1997 song, “Cool, Daddy Cool,” which includes the following lyrics, which I swear I am not making up:

“Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage/Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.”

While these cringy sentiments rhyme with the Epstein Files, they don’t ring as “family friendly.” Besides, TPUSA’s target audience seems committed to “proving” they can make the files — and the more than 5,000 references to Trump they contain — disappear simply by “patriotically” refusing to look at them.

TPUSA’s “All-American (All-White) Halftime Show” will be available to stream for free on the “nonprofit’s” YouTube, Rumble and X channels and broadcast on TBN, OAN, Daily Wire+ and other right-wing propaganda outlets the vast majority of Americans don’t watch.

Bad Bunny’s “radical leftist” performance will be broadcast on NBC, Peacock and the Spanish-language channel Telemundo to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Bad Bunny was Spotify’s No. 1 global top artist for 2025.

Under his “Meth Elvis” jumpsuit, Kid Rock is Kid Rock.

A confession: I don’t have much interest in either halftime show. The only two I ever watched all the way through were Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2008 and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 2009 (when my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers won the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy on James Harrison’s “pick-six” and Santonio Holmes’ circus toe-tap in the end zone).

Harrison and Holmes are Black, as are the majority of players in the NFL. That apparently makes them apes to the current president of the United States.

Trump said he wouldn’t attend Sunday’s game because California is “too far” from Washington, D.C. Anyone who believes that likely also believes that Kid Rock — born into wealth and raised on a six-acre estate in suburban Detroit — is a rags-to-riches “American Badass.”

The chicken-in-chief is skipping the Super Bowl because the thundering chorus of jeers and boos he stood to face could’ve pushed kickoff past midnight — especially after the oaf of office chose Thursday to post an “AI slop” depiction of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.

Apes!

Even for the crudest, cruelest, dumbest president in American history, this is a staggering new low of open, ugly racism from the alleged “leader of the free world.” In any other era, a local dog-catcher’s political career could not survive such a childish, stupid and hateful attack. In the Trump era, it was just another Thursday.

Initially, the White House defiantly dismissed the outrage as “fake,” then pivoted to pinning the now-deleted racist post on a mysterious rogue staffer. If you believe that, you likely believe that as a teenager, Kid Rock sang “‘Sweet Home Alabama’ all summer long” while chilling by the pool at his wealthy parents’ six-acre estate.

We should thank Trump for his latest racist “monkeyshines” as heartily as we condemn him. Every time he indulges his inner middle-school bully, he does decent folk a favor by moving the goalposts for what his remaining supporters are willing to live with and defend. Anyone who defends or applauds the racist, hateful behavior of this sorry excuse for a human being is a sorry excuse for a human being.

Like the ancient Romans, Americans love “bread and circuses.” No matter who is playing for the Lombardi, Super Bowl Sunday is the “high holy day” of American sports. Just about everybody tunes in.

Sunday’s competing halftime shows reflect a society mesmerized by spectacle and comfortably numb to scandal. After almost 250 years, our republic is an empire in decline under daily attack by a soulless, self-obsessed Caesar. And the response of his dwindling but devoted cult of followers?

“Cool, Daddy cool.”

NOTE: At least one Chief is in the championship game. Former Lakeland star CJ Dippre is a tight end for the New England Patriots and a welcome reason to watch the game. As a Steelers fan since birth, I’m faced with the challenge of cheering on CJ while praying the hated Patriots lose to the Seattle Seahawks.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, will probably be asleep in his recliner by halftime. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.