Gallagher to Perform Super Bowl 60 Halftime Show

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by Joe Fernandez

NEW ORLEANS—After 59 years of legendary musicians performing the halftime show on Super Bowl Sunday, the NFL is breaking tradition and has announced that 1980s comic icon Gallagher will perform a 25-minute stand-up set at Super Bowl 60.

“We feel it’s time for the NFL to move on from music,” commissioner Roger Goodell was quoted as saying.

“We saw the Shane Gillis segment where he called Nick Saban Alabama Jones and thought that was really funny. It’s time for the NFL to move into a new space and welcome standup comedy into the halftime fold.”

While names like Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, and Nikki Glaser were floated, many NFL executives felt Gallagher had the broadest appeal to a global audience.

“People in other countries are watching the game, and they don’t speak English,” a source inside the commissioner’s office said. “Some of them speak Spanish or Chinese or whatever. Gallagher smashing a watermelon is a universal language. It’s as funny in the war-torn Donbas region as it is in Branson, Missouri.” 

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One segment already being discussed involves a fifty-foot watermelon Gallagher that will emerge before a controlled demolition causes it to explode onto the audience.

The show will also feature a backup dance team called “Gaggle of Gallaghers,” where performers dressed up as a hybrid of Gallagher and a flock of geese will perform dance pieces set to Gallagher’s jokes, cadence, and punchlines.

Gallagher, a comedian known primarily for smashing watermelons and making marginalized people uncomfortable, has confirmed that both elements will be on display in February of next year.

“Oh, I’m excited as hell to bring my style of comedy to woke America,” Gallagher said in a follow-up interview with Marc Maron on his podcast, WTF. “Football, watermelons, and making fun of lesbians. What’s more American than that?”

Sources were tight-lipped about possible cameos alongside Gallagher, but they did give clues in a press statement: “If the game were being held in Soviet Russia, the halftime show would be a big event, and the football game would not be as important” (winky face emoji).

A decision has yet to be made regarding the holograms of George Carlin and Richard Pryor, who are doing an AI-generated roast battle.

End of the Bench will have more on this story after we hit this open mic.

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