Top 10 SB scandals/controversies, including a new one

Super Bowl With a Smirk returns with a fourth of five daily columns needling the self-important NFL and the gravitas of its big game. Flying under the banner, “Make Fun, Not War,” Smirk is an annual Super Bowl Week feature in the Miami Herald except years we forget to do it.

The game is the thing with any Super Bowl — despite the halftime show and TV commercials begging disproportionate attention — and Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes makes this matchup far better than most.

But Super Bowl Weeks also can be fun for the unpredictability, the unexpected headlines.

Here are Smirk’s Top 10 Super Bowl scandals, controversies and things gone wrong:

10. The Chiefs’ barber: It’s happening now, this week. With 20 people including Mahomes in line for haircuts, Kansas City’s team barber showed a test-positive result for COVID-19. This is huge for what could have been. With NFLPA leader DeMaurice Smith saying this week no circumstance would delay Sunday’s game including either QB testing positive, Mahomes literally was in line to put himself and his team in dire straits ... also so he might play with a neat trim on distinctive coif.

9. Porn interlude: This should have happened in Super Bowl XXX; instead, it occured during the Steelers-Cardinals game Feb. 1, 2009 in Tampa. Tens of thousands of fans in the Tucson, Arizona, area missed Larry Fitzgerald’s fourth-quarter TD because Comcast had begun showing 30 seconds of a porn film, with full-frontal male nudity. To offended customers, Comcast offered a $10 credit.

8. Barret Robbins: The Raiders’ starting center went AWOL before the game against the Bucs on Jan. 26, 2003 in San Diego. He turned up party-drinking in Tijuana, Mexico, blaming bipolar disorder for believing the game had already been played and he was celebrating.

7. The blackout: On Feb. 3, 2013, during the 49ers-Ravens game, the lights go out in the New Orleans Superdome, causing a one-of-its-kind 22-minute power outage and 34-minute delay. Even with no QAnon around, conspiracy theories flew about it being intentional to favor either team.

6. Ray Lewis: The night after the Jan. 30, 2000 Rams-Titans SB in Atanta, Ravens linebacker and an entourage were involved in a fight that resulted in two deaths, though charges were dismissed against Lewis in exchange for his testimony. (Thirteen years later, Lewis again was the center of SB Week for the wrong reasons after a report linked him with a banned substance called, of all things, “deer antler velvet extract.”

5. Stanley Wilson: The Bengals’ running back went AWOL before the Jan. 22, 1989 game vs. the 49ers in Miami, later found on a hotel bathroom floor after a cocaine relapse.

4. Deflategate: The most notorious of the Bill Belichick/ Patriots controversies shadowed the 2016 season and following New England into the game on Feb. 5, 2017 vs. the Falcons in Houston. (Another Pats scandal, Spygate, had dogged the team into the SB nine years earlier).

3. Eugene Robinson: The night before the Jan. 31, 1999 Broncos-Falcons game in Miami, Atlanta’s safety got busted for soliciting an undercover officer for a $40 sex act. Robinson had just won the Bart Starr Award given for high moral character.

2. Wardrobe malfunction: It was halftime of the Feb. 1, 2004 Pats-Panthers game in Houston. Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake onstage. Then: The oops seen ‘round the world. A brief, salacious flash of Jackson’s exposed right breast. It wasn’t nearly as shocking as [see No. 2 ] ... except that 143.6 million people were watching.

1. The guarantee: The Jets’ Joe Namath was poolside at a Miami hotel the week of the Jan. 12, 1969 game vs. the Colts when he told a small group of reporters, “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you” — the accurate boast resonating more than 50 years later as a centerpiece of Super Bowl legend and lore. The controversy? The Colts were favored by 28 points. Namath had to repeatedly deny he’d been drunk when making his guarantee.

The Buccaneers have been in ● their home town all week, of course, but for COVID concerns the Chiefs will not arrive in Tampa until Saturday — only 26 hours before kickoff. Based on adds and betting trends, it may be the only time all week the Bucs were ahead.

Houston furniture owner and well-known mega-sports bettor Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale has placed a $3.46 million bet on underdog Tampa Bay plus-3 1⁄2

points. The shock there? That a guy who goes by “Mattress Mack” would be that wealthy.

Kansas City beats Tampa Bay

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37-27, the winning score a

12-yard run by Mahomes, who passes for 422 yards and again is SB MVP. So says the official Madden ’21 video game simulation. With the result now known, the NFL quietly canceled Sunday’s game.

Super Bowl Tip du Jour: If

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you must host a watch party in the middle of a pandemic, make your guests wonder why they came by serving Middle Eastern

khash (stewed cows feet and skull), the Japanese delicacy tuna eyeballs and Filipino balut (duck embryo boiled alive in its shell). Enjoy!