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Sports

Justin Timberlake at Super Bowl Presser: My Son 'Will Never Play Football'

Awkward!
screen capture via Twitter/@CBSNews

Justin Timberlake will be your halftime entertainment at Super Bowl LII and today—exactly 14 years to day when he exposed Janet Jackson's nipple at Super Bowl XXXVIII and escaped virtually unscathed in the public eye—he had some interesting things to say about football at an NFL press conference. In between talking about being ready to suit up at wide receiver should Bill Belichick run out of bodies and being serenaded twice with "Happy Birthday" performances, Timberlake was asked whether he would be OK with letting his son, Silas, play football. His answer—from the NFL's point of view, anyway—was…not great!

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Reacting to the joke about playing in the Super Bowl, the reporter then asked Timberlake if he'd support his son playing in the NFL and after stammering a bit he said "he will never play football. No, no…" and went on to say he just wanted his kid to be a good person and if he wanted to "get into the arts or sports, then, yeah, I would fully support that."

He was a little flippant, but you can also almost see the moment he goes oops! in his head, since he knows that this is the NFL's massive showcase for the sport—a sport which is very publicly dealing with a host of issues involving player safety—and here's the big movie star/recording artist they hired to reach casual viewers talking about not letting his kid play the very sport he's there to promote. Suboptimal.

There could be any number of reasons he wouldn't want Silas to play football apart from the risk of injury—for instance, his mother and father are filthy stinking rich—but a fumble is a fumble, whether you recover it or not.