Photo : Kevin Winter ( Getty )

On Sunday night, Sports Illustrated producer Jessica Smetana delivered, to no one in particular, a mild criticism of the very bad Sunday Night Football theme performed by Carrie Underwood. The musician saw it and was mad.





Smetana, who could have doubled down o n her acceptable (and not even new) opinion about Underwood’s song and called out the singer’s half-baked and smarmy argument about women supporting women, instead tried to backpedal and groveled at the feet of Underwood for forgiveness.

The Underwood fans were furious that someone would dare to gently jab some highly produced Pepsi sponcon, and some of them sent Smetana nasty messages. A bunch of lobotomized websites wrote up this non-story chum.




Smetana tried to do more damage control.




Then Smetana and Sports Illustrated senior writer Charlotte Wilder dedicated a segment of their podcast to the kerfuffle:



I don’t get the whole Aunt Char thing, but certainly Smetana is not a bad feminist for criticizing another woman’s work. And obviously it’s stupid for a nationally renowned celebrity to take issue with a relative nobody’s opinion that their minute-long football commercial sucks ass, and really Carrie Underwood fans should all be grateful to know exactly how much of a sensitive weenie she is.

Though this should go without saying: People are allowed to have opinions about a TV theme, even mean ones, and they shouldn’t apologize for them. Anyhow, sometimes you make it without having to learn about the stupidest story of the week and sometimes you don’t. Better luck next week.