President Obama has predicted that Super Bowl XLIX will be a close game, and said under-inflation of footballs is “break[ing] the rules.”
Weighing in, in an interview aired late Sunday afternoon with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, the president declined to predict whether Seattle or New England would earn rings this year.
“I will say that it’s going to be close, and the question I have is whether Seattle’s secondary’s healthy or not,” Obama said, referring to the injuries to Seahawks Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor, stars of the Seattle defense sometimes known as the “Legion of Boom.”
“That’s the heart and soul of their team,” the president said. “They’ve got three guys back there who are hurt, and I don’t know how that’s going to affect the game.”
As for the allegations that the Patriots used under-inflated footballs in their AFC Championship win over the Indianapolis Colts — a controversy that has come to be known as “Deflate-Gate” — Obama said he had been unaware that each team in the NFL supplies its own footballs for each game.
“I’m assuming one of the things the NFL is going to be doing just to avoid any of these controversies is figuring out how the officials [can be] in charge of the footballs from start to finish,” the president said.
However, Obama observed, “the Patriots were going to beat the Colts regardless of what the footballs looked like.” The final score of the game was 45-7.
Asked directly by Guthrie whether he thought playing with under-inflated balls counted as cheating, Obama said, “I think that if you break the rules, you break the rules.”
The president declined to pick a winner for the game, as his team, the Chicago Bears, are not in the game this year, and that it’s “always wise for me not to choose a team, because then I just alienate one big city.”
Asked whether he preferred football to basketball, he said, “I’m still a basketball guy, but I love football.”
Asked whether he preferred Buffalo wings or chips and guacamole, he replied, “That’s tough. I’m going to go with chips and guac,” but added, “I’m not a fanatic about guac.”
Asked whether he preferred Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, he was quick with a response: “Love ’em both.”
