Super Bowl LX had a one-of-a-kind halftime show headlined by the pop sensation, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, but not everybody found it entertaining. The 3x Grammy winner performed his gig entirely in Spanish, so you can imagine the distaste President Donald Trump felt. The POTUS hopped on Truth Social and called the set “absolutely terrible,” claiming “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” However, Deion Sanders stepped up to back Bunny.

“I was curious… Why everybody criticizes Bad Bunny?” Deion Sanders said on his podcast We Got Time Today. “This is what I thought. We got to stop being selfish and understand that, okay, there’s a language barrier.”

Bad Bunny made history as the first halftime performer to go fully Spanish on the biggest stage in American television. Maybe not everyone understands the language, but it was a pretty significant moment for the Hispanic community in the nation. In all honesty, you don’t really need subtitles to feel the energy in a Super Bowl halftime, something Deion Sanders noticed. 

“The presentation, the energy, the excitement, the inclusion, just the eye, and you kept your eyes moving, to me, it was awesome and entertaining,” he said. “I thought he did a wonderful job of entertaining. I really did.” 

Bad Bunny brought Puerto Rico to Santa Clara. There were sugarcane fields, a nail salon, a neighborhood bar, his signature casita, and flags from across North, Central, and South America waving behind him. The 31-year-old at least said one English line, “God bless America,” as he held up a football that read, “Together, We Are America.”

“I thought he was the first one I ever seen really put on for the culture,” Deion Sanders added. “For his culture. Oh, my God. They had to be excited. When he goes back to Puerto Rico, I know they’re going crazy.”

In fact, Bad Bunny is not short of support!

Deion Sanders isn’t alone in supporting Bad Bunny 

While critics focused on the language, Sanders wasn’t the only one who felt something deeper in the performance. ESPN reporter John Sutcliffe spoke in Spanish after the performance and got visibly emotional. 

“Hay que sentirse orgulloso,” he said. “Benito le cantó en Español a la fiesta más importante de los Americanos.”

The statement translates to “You have to feel proud, Benito sang in Spanish at the most important celebration of the Americans.”

The Mexican-American reporter also pointed to fans in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile who should feel the same. Social media lit up with people echoing that sentiment. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell also chimed in on the conversation, not only defending Bad Bunny but also celebrating the performance he put on at Super Bowl LX, claiming that he truly lived up to his global star status.

“Listen, Bad Bunny is, and I think that was demonstrated last night [at the Grammys], one of the great artists in the world. That’s one of the reasons we chose him,” the commissioner told the media. “But the other reason is he understood the platform he was on, and that this platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together with their creativity, with their talent, and to be able to use this moment to do that.”

Maybe that’s the point Deion Sanders was making all along. The “language barrier” isn’t a roadblock. You didn’t have to understand every lyric to understand the moment. And if you couldn’t feel the energy, that might say more about you than the performance.