Super Bowl LX is here. New England vs. Seattle. A matchup so dry it makes unsweetened almond milk look like a tequila shot. The real question isn’t who’s winning the ring. It’s whether Black folks should even bother giving the NFL their Sunday night.
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There are two reasons why I think we shouldn’t give professional football any play this weekend. And unlike a J. Cole album, I’m going to get to the point before you fall asleep.
We’re in the year of our Lord 2026 and the NFL is moonwalking backward on race. The league spent all week spamming Black History Month posts yet just wrapped up a 10-team hiring cycle with zero Black head coaches. We’ve reached a point where you could make the argument that it’s easier for a Black man to become a GM in the NHL (shoutout to Mike Grier) than it is to get a headset in a league that’s nearly 70% percent Black.
For example Robert Kraft—the owner of the team you absolutely should NOT be cheering for: the Patriots—wants his players to wear his Blue Square anti-hate pins. Yet just last week he was sitting next to Donald Trump at the documentary premiere for Melania. (Did anyone other than old white women watch that film?)
They aren’t being subtle. This isn’t a rock thrown with a hidden hand. The league is happy to borrow Black culture for a Kendrick Lamar halftime show and speak the language of solidarity. But when it comes to giving Black folks real power inside NFL organizations, the door remains shut. I thought this was supposed to be fixed.
Established in 2003, the Rooney Rule was implemented to ensure Black head-coaching candidates got a fair shot at being hired by requiring teams to interview at least one—now two—Black candidates for every vacancy. But the Rooney Rule isn’t a bridge to leadership. It’s a revolving door that leads right back to the coordinator’s room. If the league won’t hire us to lead, why should we give them our attention on their biggest day?
That’s the biggest reason not to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, but there’s another, and it’s much simpler and, honestly, it’s kinda petty. Put simply: we ain’t there.
Okay, I lied. We are there. As I said before, Black folks make up roughly 70 percent of the players in the NFL. But also we kinda ain’t there. This is the first year since 2022 that the Super Bowl features neither a Black head coach nor a Black quarterback.
So if Black labor is essential but Black leadership is optional, the real question isn’t who will win the Super Bowl. It’s why we’re watching it at all.
Straight From 
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