A super quest for sweet victory

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/02/2019 (2731 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight because I am so (bad word) excited about Super Bowl LIII — which is gladiator speak for 53 — which kicks off Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

It’s not that I am overly excited about the game itself, because no one actually watches the Super Bowl because they like football. No, there are three main reasons for watching the big game, namely:

● You love the multimillion-dollar TV commercials specifically made to air during the Super Bowl, even though you often can’t watch them in Canada unless you are on your computer, in which case you can watch them;

● You want to argue with your friends over which player is the most handsome. For the record, in a poll of the “top 25 best looking NFL players” conducted a few years back by NFLInjury.com, New England Patriots QB Tom Brady was the runaway No. 1 pick, and I’m pretty sure he’s playing on Sunday;

● You want to gather at a party at a friend’s house to see how many chicken-wing bones you can hide in their potted plants, and, if possible, make an even bigger nacho cheese stain on your host’s living-room carpet than you did last year.

This year, however, I will be planted in front of someone’s big-screen TV — this will not be my big-screen TV because I am not dumb enough to host a Super Bowl party — sweating like a Butterball turkey on Christmas Day as I wait to see whether someone sings Sweet Victory.

For the record, I am not talking about a victory song belted out by the winners of the championship game. No, I am talking about an awesome song that was performed in the season 2 “Band Geeks” episode of the insanely popular Nickelodeon animated children’s TV series SpongeBob SquarePants.

For those of you who spend most of your TV time watching Masterpiece Theatre, allow me to explain. What I’m talking about is a cartoon show featuring the adventures of SpongeBob SquarePants, an energetic and optimistic sea sponge who physically resembles a rectangular kitchen sponge, and his aquatic pals in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom.

In an episode back in 2001, their superstar marching band performs at the “Bubble Bowl,” which is their universe’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, and they brought the underwater house down with their rendition of Sweet Victory, a rock anthem wherein SpongeBob, in classic power-ballad style, belts out: “And it’s sweet, sweet, sweet victory, yeah!/And it’s ours for the taking/It’s ours for the fight/In the sweet, sweet, sweet victory, yeah!/And the world is last to fall!”

What you need to know is that, sadly, Stephen Hillenburg, the genius who created SpongeBob, died last November of ALS, and ever since, fans of the show have been begging Super Bowl organizers and the halftime entertainers — this year it’s Maroon 5 — to pay tribute to Hillenburg by having Sweet Victory included in the halftime show.

In fact, a Change.org online petition asking for Sweet Victory to be performed during the halftime show has collected more than… hold on while I check… 1.189 million signatures as I write these words on Thursday morning.

Q: Is this a genius idea, or what?

A: Yes, it is a remarkably silly notion, which means it is a great idea, because it will help a lot of people forget, albeit briefly, how the (bad word) NFL keeps fumbling the ball on social justice issues and concussions and things like that.

Q: Right, but could this really happen in the sense that this corporate sports titan might actually include a goofy song from an animated children’s TV show featuring a sea sponge in their big-bucks halftime entertainment?

A: I am going to go out on a limb here and say: Um… maybe. You should probably sign the online petition.

I’m taking that shaky stand because there have been clues that SpongeBob might get his moment, including the fact that on Jan. 13, Maroon 5 tweeted out a Super Bowl-themed hype video, wherein SpongeBob makes a split-second appearance around the 32-second mark.

And, according to CBS Sports, a prop bet — short for “proposition bet,” a wager made on elements of a game or event that have no direct effect on the game’s final outcome — for Sunday’s game is letting fans gamble on whether Maroon 5 or someone else will give Sweet Victory a shout-out.

Also, back in November, the Twitter account of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the game is being played, shared a GIF of SpongeBob strutting his stuff in his band outfit. So there’s that.

Not to mention fans have made a meme out of mashing up the “Band Geeks” episode with rapper Travis Scott’s hit Sicko Mode, and by sheer coincidence (we’re kidding), Scott will be joining Maroon 5 onstage.

Like I may have said earlier, there will also be a football game on Sunday, but I think most of us will be tuning in to see whether an animated sea sponge gets to pay a musical tribute to his late creator.

And once he’s finished doing that, I’m kind of hoping he’ll help me mop up that disgusting nacho cheese stain on my host’s carpet. With any luck, the game will be absorbing, too.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca