Atlanta threatens to add SpongeBob SquarePants to Maroon 5 for worst-ever Super Bowl halftime

SpongeBob Squarepants fans have spoken.

The Super Bowl is apparently listening.

SpongeBob petition going strong

Fans of the children’s cartoon have literally petitioned to have the popular song “Sweet Victory” from the long-running show performed at the Super Bowl in February to honor show creator Stephen Hillenburg, who died in November at 57.

Why?

It’s a good question. That the song has a football theme is apparently the loosest of loose ties.

Regardless, the petition has garnered more than 900,000 electronic signatures as of this post, and that’s apparently a strong enough pull to get the Super Bowl’s attention.

Super Bowl host acknowledges SpongeBob

The Twitter account of Mercedes Benz Stadium, which is hosting February’s Super Bowl, tweeted this Wednesday evening.

In case you’re wondering, that’s an image from the episode where “Sweet Victory” was performed at a football game.

We’re not really sure with what authority Mercedes Benz Stadium is tweeting here. But it can be assumed stadium officials are looped in on this kind of thing, and it would be a pretty dirty tease to SpongeBob fans to deliver this message without backing it up.

Maroon 5 is bad enough

If that’s the case, we’re reaching peak levels of bad Super Bowl halftime.

The NFL already chose to roll out Maroon 5 to headline the halftime show. It’s an uninspired choice of a band that represents peak bland, generic and pandering — really all things that are bad about pop music best fit as the soundtrack of a TV commercial selling you something you don’t want to buy.

Shoehorning “Sweet Victory” into the mix just promises to make things worse.

No disrespect to SpongeBob

Let’s face it. SpongeBob and “Sweet Victory” have infinitely more artistic merit than anything Maroon 5’s ever produced. This is not a hit job on SpongeBob. SpongeBob alone would be much more appealing that Maroon 5. Almost anything would.

The idea just doesn’t make any sense to anybody but die-hard fans of the show. And that’s not fit for a Super Bowl.

Can we please just go back in time and get Outkast?

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