As you may know, this past Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday, which means parties all across the country to celebrate the occasion and an over-the-top halftime show filled with popular musical artists. Several months ago, a change.org petition surfaced to get the "Spongebob Squarepants" song, "Sweet Victory," to play at this year's Super Bowl in memory of Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of the series, who passed away due to complications of ALS this past November. During the half time show, the trumpet fanfare at the beginning of the song was played but switched to "Sicko Mode" by Travis Scott and Drake right after.

As most suspected, fans of the show were not happy about this brief "tribute," and many feel like they were baited with only five seconds of Spongebob. I was just as upset when I noticed this and this halftime show was not a proper tribute to the creator who helped shaped millions of people's childhoods for the last two decades. "Spongebob Squarepants" has made a bigger impact on both pop culture and the people who grew up watching it than any other children's cartoon within the last thirty years, and the petition got over one million signatures, so the least we could have gotten was a proper tribute.

The halftime show was even teased to have a tribute to Hillenburg with Squidward Tentacles introducing the halftime show, along with a tweet on Marron 5's Twitter account with a minute-long video that had a brief clip of Spongebob in it and the hashtag #SBLIII. This, along with the one million signatures that the original petition got, would have been a sign that there was a chance that "Sweet Victory" was going to be played at the halftime show. Unfortunately, all of that hype ended up being for nothing.

The NFL should be ashamed that all of this publicity about the halftime show was built specifically on the fact that it would be a tribute to Stephen Hillenburg with a performance of "Sweet Victory" and Squidward introducing the show. There have been many times where people have felt cheated after hype from a show or movie, but this was probably the most cheated I ever felt from anything my entire life, and many other people feel the same way. This is one of the worst things that can happen during a Super Bowl and this kind of publicity does not look good on the NFL.

Given the fact that this was the lowest-rated Super Bowl in ten years, this halftime teasing does not look good on any future Super Bowls. This kind of publicity and hype-mongering does not look good on anyone who participates in it, and the fans start to get angry because of it. I honestly do not blame anyone who watched the Super Bowl for getting angry at the halftime performance, since this is something that is not new when it comes to media. I am hoping that these traps will no longer be a thing in years to come.