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New York Post Super Bowl cover: ‘Champs vs. Cheats’

By Hayden Kane

Jan 30, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll (left) and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (right) speak during a joint press conference for Super Bowl XLIX at Phoenix Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 30, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll (left) and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (right) speak during a joint press conference for Super Bowl XLIX at Phoenix Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports /
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The day of Super Bowl Sunday is finally upon us, but the New York Post still felt the need to take one more jab at the New England Patriots and ‘Deflategate’ first.

We did it, you guys. We somehow made an absolutely nonsensical “controversy” about deflated footballs relevant for a full 14 days.

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Congratulations, I guess.

One would think that two weeks would be plenty of time for the story of slightly deflated footballs in a blowout AFC Championship to go away. Alas, the story has been kept alive, and so it is that on the biggest day on the NFL schedule, we are still subjected to jokes, cracks, and cartoons about it.

At issue is the New York Post cover for Super Bowl Sunday. Observe.

Look, nobody is advocating cheating by the Patriots, a franchise notorious for pushing boundaries and a franchise that legitimately did get caught cheating at one point. If they did something nefarious with the footballs against the Indianapolis Colts, they should be punished.

But can we all agree that they were going to win anyway, and that there has to be more interesting things to talk about in the week leading up to the Super Bowl?

There are so many fascinating match-ups and interesting football topics to be discussed that it would have been nice to see those get more focus. Instead we beat this story into the ground and kept it alive for a full two weeks, an eternity in this short-attention-span world in which we live.

If it weren’t the Patriots, things probably would have been different. If it weren’t Bill Belichick, we probably would have moved on by now. But it is and it is, and so this controversy lives on and will continue to be a headline well into the off-season.

Surely there will be people who will be skeptical if the Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX. The way these things go, there will probably be people who will be skeptical of their actions even if they don’t win. If you need a reminder of that dynamic, just take a quick scan of social media during the game.

Ultimately, this match-up had to do with the fact that these two teams are outstanding, and whichever team is better will decide this Super Bowl. It’s just too bad that we have been so inclined to talk about something else first.

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