Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark is too busy swimming victory laps while Karl the Kraken is moping after the January 30, 2-0 win by San Jose over Seattle to get any writing done. So, as is standard operational procedure, you’ve got me.

As even the least sports-minded among you are aware, this year's Super Bowl features the 89th matchup in the past five years between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. Kansas City punched its ticket to the big game, being held in Las Vegas (and you wonder why the NFL had no problem with the Raiders moving there from Oakland?) this year, via playing just enough offense and top-notch defense to defeather the Baltimore Ravens. Meanwhile, the 49ers took full advantage of Lions head coach Dan Campbell’s innate ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by not knowing when to hold ‘em or when to fold ‘em to topple Detroit. Musical interlude time.

The general sentiment regarding this matchup is best expressed below.

Nevertheless, it is the Super Bowl, and people will be watching if for no other reason than to see if Usher invites Taylor Swift on stage during the halftime show. The game also provides glorious opportunities for progressive sportswriters — pardon the redundancy — to trot their inanities out of the manure-rich end of the barn. Our Brad Slager has already done a superb job noting MSM’s freakout over the right’s non-existent freakout regarding the Chiefs’ participation meaning two more weeks of all Taylor Swift all the time.

MORE: The Press Freakout About Conservatives' 'Freakout' About Taylor Swift Is Monumentally Stupid

We now include Martenzie Johnson of Andscape and Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle’s respective entries in the hallowed membership of the Stuck on Stupid Hall of Fame.

Mr. Johnson writes for Andscape, an ESPN-owned site that has taken Joe Biden’s 2020 admonishment to Charlamagne tha God regarding defining blackness demanding leftist fealty and applied it to itself. After a reasonable albeit lengthy preamble excoriating Jackson for not playing well in the AFC championship game, which is correct, Johnson shoehorns in this bizarre nonsense:

The adage that Black people “have to be twice as good to get half as far” is alive and well in the NFL even as the number of Black starting quarterbacks reached an all-time high of 14 this season. Being labeled not “quarterbacky” enough by a media pundit or having a fellow player say the “formula” to beating you, a quarterback, is to make you throw the ball are nonsense (and coded), but the noise gets increasingly louder when you lead just one touchdown drive and account for two turnovers in a game your team only loses by seven points.

Unfortunately, Jackson has to win or be perfect to gain the respect of those who watch him play, and on Sunday night he did neither.

Seriously, what the hell?

A quick glance at the Ravens’ opponent in this game reveals that their quarterback was … wait for it … black. Some guy named Mahomes, rumor has it, can play a little.

Does Patrick Mahomes have to be twice as good to get half as far? No, he’s twice as good to get twice as far. Do you think Mahomes has five gazillion commercial endorsements because he’s black? No. Great actor? No. Mahomes’ fame and fortunes come from winning football games, this year dragging his motley lot of butterfingered receivers to the Super Bowl with him. Being black has nothing to do with it. Being black has nothing to do with Lamar Jackson having a bad day any more than being white has to do with Brock Purdy putting together a solid second half to defeat Jared Goff (also white) in the NFC championship game. Jackson is no more looked down upon than Clayton Kershaw has been for postseason shortcomings. But since there is no racial victimhood in that, it goes unmentioned.

We now move on to the very white Mr. Ostler, who, after trotting out the same tripe Brad refuted earlier, snarks this:

San Francisco has become the poster city for the dystopian doom loop (also the name of a ride at Great America, I believe) unleashed by Democratic leadership in major cities. No 49ers live in San Francisco, and none has expressed any political opinions, but the uniform doesn’t lie.

One safely assumes this is sarcasm, as everyone who is anyone knows everything is hunky-dory in Baghdad By the Bay. How ironic that at the bottom of Ostler’s post, the following headline from his newspaper states:

Inside one deadly week in San Francisco’s deadliest year 

In a span of seven days, 24 people were lost in a tidal wave of drug overdoses. Here are their stories

But yeah, conservatives are the problem. Genius, Mr. Ostler. Pure genius.

A final note referring back to the January 30 San Jose Sharks-Seattle Kraken game. January 30 was my father’s birthday, which he celebrated in Heaven, as has been the case since 1999. One of the last times I saw him was in 1994 when I stopped in Indiana for the weekend on my way back home to California after a week in Nashville at the annual Gospel Music Association convention. It was the first year the Sharks appeared in the playoffs. Although a tremendous sports fan, my father wasn’t much on hockey. Still, he agreed to watch with me Game Seven of the first-round matchup between the Sharks and the heavily favored Detroit Red Wings. When Jamie Baker scored the game-winning goal for the Sharks, my father barely suppressed a laugh as he watched his normally taciturn son literally jump up from the couch and shout in joy.

I also think about my friend and freelance writer Matt Crossman, who although bearing unimpeachable credentials as the Rush fan’s Rush fan has eloquently written about the joy received from interacting with his daughter’s and their all Tay Tay all the time obsession. He mentioned to me how the moment Swift and Travis Kelce became an item, the “Are you watching football again, Dad?” suddenly turned into “ARE THE CHIEFS ON?!!” and subsequent discussions about the game itself in between Swift sightings.

These are the things from which sports memories ought to spring forth. The clenched one-note samba writers forever seeing everything through a monochromatic prism will fade. It is the memories, both old and newly made, of family forging moments together with sports as a catalyst that matter.