THE MOST MADDENINGLY STUPID SUPER BOWL CLICKBAIT SO FAR

We’re not here to piss on your Pats parade. That’s for football fans to literally do on the streets after they win this weekend. We just want to make sure people know how much they’re being pandered to by shitty journalists, particularly of the TV news variety, any time the Super Bowl is in our sights. The producer chumps in newsrooms who force their reporters to chase all and any big game stories they can wrestle up in the weeks leading up to Sunday may actually love the team, but that isn’t why they’re pushing all this garbage on you. They’re doing it because it gets a lot of clicks and eyeballs, and because some people really are stupid enough to read and share the kind of nonsense we’re mocking below.

“Homeless man gets three AFC championship tickets after helping a Chiefs player stuck in the snow” (Washington Post)

Fine, this isn’t technically a Super Bowl headline, but it’s still worth mentioning since countless dingbats on the evening news from here to California covered the story as if the NFL eradicated homelessness.

“Going to the Super Bowl on a budget” (WBZ)

We can’t find this one online, but we swear that we saw it on the news last week, and it’s obviously asinine. Hopefully the station came to the same conclusion and scrubbed it from the internet.

“‘Not a prediction, it’s a spoiler’: Patriots fan gets Super Bowl LIII champions tattoo” (WHDH)

Please don’t make us have to explain the difference between skillfully predicting something and being a lucky moron who got a tattoo that happens to be accurate in retrospect. Face it, there hasn’t been a real good ink story since that putz got Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign logo on his forehead.

“Tom Brady closed out enormous Patriots Super Bowl send-off rally with mic ‘drop’” (Yahoo! Sports)

This is literally a story about the way that Tom Brady stopped holding something. Also notable is that the reporter managed to speak with every single person at Gillette Stadium about their feelings on the turnout for the send-off:

That face is just so Brady. He, and everyone else, was in awe at the size of the crowd. … Brady praised his teammates for staying grounded, and for listening to the coaches and not riding the emotional roller coaster of the season. And then he ended his remarks with a chant and a mic drop that turned into a mic toss.

“From dip to sliders: These 5 snacks will make you a champ with your Super Bowl party crowd” (Detroit Free Press)

We are sorry to single out any particular outlet for this annual mass atrocity, but whatever, shame on the Detroit Free Press and anyone else who pretends people need to eat different foods during a football game. As far as we’re concerned, those who go the extra yard to cook things into special shapes for sporting events are as crazy as Ray Finkle’s mom. Laces out, weirdos.

“A 10-year-old kid wins the science fair by painting Tom Brady as a cheater” (CBS Sports)

Some folks have suggested that it is unfortunate that some kid named Ace from Kentucky, whose science fair project didn’t actually prove that Tom Brady cheats despite what innumerable news outlets are blasphemously claiming, is being trolled by insane Patriots fans. But as one friend of the Dig suggested at a party this past weekend, “Uh, more like the kid is the troll in this case.” Which seems about right. For him to get this kind of press, the Brady hater must have hired the same PR goons who are polishing the rep of that stare-happy hairdo from Covington Catholic. Ace’s idiotic plea to Brady: “Give me some of your money; you don’t deserve it.”

“Pizza Hut ‘changes’ its name for Super Bowl LIII” (Fox News)

Crouch down and prepare for some seriously diseased marketing diddly duh:

It’s Pizza Hut’s first year as the official pizza of the Super Bowl, and in honor of the momentous occasion, they’ve changed their name to a pun you may not immediately get—unless you’re a football fan. Pizza Hut is now “Pizza Hut Hut.”

“Will Spongebob’s ‘Sweet Victory’ be played during Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime show?” (Sporting News)

How much do you want to bet that the Venn diagram comparing this list to the signatures that spurred Weezer to perform Africa resembles a cock ring?

The creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenburg, died in November, 2018. Not too long after a petition was started on Change.org that garnered a lot of attention. The title? Have “Sweet Victory” Performed at the Super Bowl. The petition has over 1.1 million signatures as of this writing.

“Harry Potter rips Tom Brady” (NESN via Variety)

Here’s one about how, unlike every alleged liberal in New England, British actor Daniel Radcliffe remembers that Brady either lacks the compassion and intellectual aptitude to comprehend why Donald Trump is a bigot, or on the other hand understands the POTUS completely and doesn’t care about the people or communities that are harmed by his presidency. Maybe this one’s not so stupid after all:

“Take that ‘MAGA’ hat out of your locker,” Radcliffe said during a recent interview at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “I feel like that was the moment when, as a country, we were all like ‘Oh, come on dude!’ We all want—you’re awesome—to be behind you. Don’t put that in there.”