On Feb. 8, 125 million Americans gathered around their TV screens to engage in one of the country’s most anticipated and universal festivities: the Super Bowl.
The second Sunday in February is usually a day marking the end of six arduous months of the regular football season — and a grinding playoff. All these games culminate in the National Football League’s crowning achievement: the Lombardi Trophy.
This time around, however, the winner wasn’t one of the NFL’s 32 franchises, and the Most Valuable Player wasn’t some stocky running back or shifty receiver. This Super Bowl Sunday, the country won, and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — widely known as Bad Bunny — was our MVP.
In a game driven by defensive performances and dominated by ads about artificial intelligence, weight-loss drugs and sports betting, Bad Bunny took center stage and did the impossible. By emphasizing love, compassion and rhythm, he managed to supersede division, delivering a truly universal celebration of America. From start to finish, Bad Bunny staged a political performance, not a partisan one. Efforts from beyond the gridiron to turn his show into another case of “red versus blue” only diminish what ended up being a brief moment of unity in a fragmented world.
This is not to say the halftime show was entirely apolitical. Throughout the show, Bad Bunny flew “la bandera azul-clarito,” a symbol of Puerto Rican resistance that switches out the current flag’s navy blue hue for a lighter, pre-1898 shade. For years, the flag was banned by Puerto Rico’s colonial government for its separatist connotations.
At one point, Puerto Rican pop star Enrique “Ricky” Martín Morales sang “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii,” (What happened to Hawaii) — a cautionary tale of U.S. colonialism dressed in a solemn yet powerful ballad.
Since before the game, this year’s Super Bowl was clad in political subtext. The mere announcement of Bad Bunny’s involvement led to a deluge of criticism aimed squarely at the NFL and its chosen performer. At the time, his selection felt like a political flashpoint — a litmus test where the country could gauge the limits to the “vibe shift” that followed President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024. For that reason, the matter was hotly contested as both sides of the political divide wrestled over who traditions, like the halftime show, really belonged to.
At this year’s Grammy’s, it felt like the answer was clear: Bad Bunny dedicated his Album of the Year speech to the millions of illegal immigrants residing in America. To many, his statements were setting the stage for a gritty and overtly political show, following in the footsteps of last year’s halftime headliner to deliver an aggressive, diss-laced critique of the current administration.
But even in a show peppered with sublime critiques of American imperialism, Bad Bunny avoided confrontation and chose to speak past our differences, turning to a message of love and regional unity — something any good-faithed viewer can get behind. This message culminated in a final ode to the Americas, as Bad Bunny held a football which read, “Together, we’re all America.”
Despite this rare turn to unity, the partisan industrial complex has worked to turn it into an ideological victory, a step that simultaneously dulls Bad Bunny’s message while pitting Americans against each other, again.
The day before the show, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that Feb. 8, 2026 would be known as “Bad Bunny Day.” The announcement was a not-so-subtle jab at Trump, meant to rage bait the White House by co-opting the president’s signature style: writing in all caps and throwing “Trump-esque” digs at Jesse Watters and Kid Rock.
Dedicating Feb. 8 to the Puerto Rican singer was a move that had virtually nothing to do with Bad Bunny. Instead, it was an explicit attempt to hijack his halftime show in order to top a premier political opponent. This shallow attempt to troll the president is made so much worse by the fact that “Bad Bunny Day” was fake from the start, as Newsom never actually signed a ceremonial proclamation commemorating the event.
But across the aisle, efforts to politicize the performance were so much worse.
Before the show was even over, Trump said exactly what you’d expect, taking to Truth Social to trash nearly every facet of the performance while somehow also managing to bring up the NFL’s new kickoff rule and the stock market’s record-breaking week. The president’s rant was all-encompassing, but he missed a notable exception: Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show.”
Apart from being a pre-recorded and depressing mess, TPUSA’s show was another attempt to sow division as conservative leaders sought to manufacture controversy months before Bad Bunny even took the stage.
This unreasonable desire to turn the halftime show into a partisan win has even led to various occasions where prolific partisans — on both sides — have spread falsehoods and lies about both shows.
Whether it be claims from conservatives that the TPUSA show somehow rivaled the NFL’s in viewership numbers, or liberals’ false claims that Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to the 5-year-old kid detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a desperation for politicizing everything has led to occasions of blatant misinformation.
Perhaps it would have been easier for Bad Bunny to deliver a bitter, aggressive and exclusionary performance. He could have picked a side and stuck with it, chastising half of the country to earn the other half’s praise. But instead of calling out the stranger, he focused on what makes us similar, delivering a truly universal — and still distinctly political — ode to all the Americans that call our continents home.
Mateo Alvarez is a Senior Opinion Editor for the Michigan Daily, he can be reached atmateoalv@umich.edu.
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