The Super Bowl 50 halftime show should’ve been Kanye West

The Super Bowl is America’s greatest spectacle. Over the past half-century we’ve seen the game go from a glorified exhibition between two teams from different leagues into a week-long celebration of sports, pop culture and commercialism that culminates with the biggest sporting event of the year.

In a lot of ways, the Super Bowl is now directly associated with excellence. We expect it to have the best after-parties, the best tailgating, the best commercials and the best football game. The Super Bowl is no place to be average.

This year, you can tell the NFL is committed to making Super Bowl 50 the best we’ll ever see. That’s why you see the gold everywhere from the field to the shield, months before the actual game.

Everything needs to be amazing for this year’s Super Bowl, including the halftime show, which has turned into an event to celebrate the world’s greatest musical artists. With all due respect to a well-respected band like Coldplay, the NFL picked the wrong musical act for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show. There is only one man who can Super Bowl 50 amazing, and his name is Kanye West. Here’s why:

No one understands the art of doing ridiculous, over-the-top things better than Kanye West. There are countless examples of this, but we’ll leave you with three things he actually tweeted out (which he has since deleted) to prove our point:

“I specifically ordered Persian rugs with cherub imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple Persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh”

“Sometimes I get emotional over fonts”

“Do you know where to find marble conference tables? I’m looking to have a conference ... not until I get the table though”

Kanye won’t have any problems making an impression at the Super Bowl.

After the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake incident at Super Bowl XXXVIII, the NFL went super-cautious with halftime acts for years, turning what should be the most exciting entertainment of the year into a glorified Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert. In case you forgot, here’s who played the halftime show for the following six years:

While the NFL went with more modern acts in recent years, they’ve still gone with people who won’t push the envelope, so the NFL still hasn’t corrected itself out of their cautious ways. On behalf of all the 20-somethings, I propose this is the year we should get to cash in all the chips we’ve been forced to hold over the past decade. A half-dozen years of performers who peaked in the 80’s or earlier is worth one year of Kanye. It’s only fair. Just stand reverently and pretend to enjoy the music like we did all those years:

For starters, if he gets the Super Bowl show, there’s a chance he could skip doing music entirely. If you think this sounds crazy, keep in mind he used his MTV VMA Video Vanguard award ceremony (a time when most artists do a medley of their biggest hits) to deliver a semi-sober, semi-coherent speech about award shows and announce a presidential run.

But even if he does play, lots of weird non-music stuff can happen that will keep things fun, especially if there’s a technical malfunction that forces him to improvise like he did at the Pan Am Games:

And even if everything goes exactly according to plan, there’s another way to enjoy Kanye, even if you don’t like his music: Mute the audio. Just watch him dance and do a bunch of crazy stuff with no context. It’s awesome, just trust me on this.

Here’s a short list of things that Kanye could do that are completely within the realm of possibility:

Everything is on the table for a Super Bowl Kanye performance. Don’t overthink this, NFL. Just give Kanye the mic and let him loose.