There are a few reasons to avoid watching the Super Bowl this year:
The NFL’s history of turning a blind eye toward domestic violence when its employees —namely the well-paid athletes who are the bread and butter of that entertainment company — are involved;
The NFL’s treatment of some its retired players, the gridiron gladiators as they are sometimes marketed who have difficulty collecting their fair pension allotments or the post career medical care;
The NFL’s slow, almost dim-witted approach to addressing concussions and player safety;
The NFL’s role in pressuring cities to cave in to the demands of owners who demanded publicly subsidized stadiums;
The usual three-hour regular season game is turned into a 20-hour affair because it is the league’s premiere event so every commercial break adds about two days and 30 seconds to a game that is supposed to last no more than 90 minutes;
The commercials which were at one time the most entertaining part of Super Bowl Sunday have over the years become uninspired and dull;
In the event there are exceptional commercials to be watched, one need not sit through hours of mind-numbing game play but instead watch them online at your own discretion;
With the exception of a few brief moments in which a receiver makes a spectacular leaping catch or a running back breaks through a scrum of testosterone addled mountains attempting to smother him and gallops away, the game is boring;
Super Bowl parties are not about watching the game en masse. Whether it is at home or in a bar most people gathered in front of a television on Super Bowl Sunday are, by halftime at the latest, distracted by unrelated conversations over adult beverages and a plateful of food. In other words, Super Bowl parties are potluck mixers the average American male finds tolerable because the TV will be on providing white noise and an excuse not to engage in conversation with strangers;
Because the NFL will gladly send a “stop or we’ll sue” letter to anyone who uses the phrase “Super Bowl” to promote their parties or products;
The Pittsburgh Steelers are not playing in it.
I could probably add more reasons to not watch the NFL’s final meaningful game of the season this year. Fans of the game can probably list a few of their own to watch. Power to them.
But the main reasons I won’t watch this year are because it is on a network that has done little to dampen the growing stench of Islamaphobia, and this year’s game features a team owned by a man with ties to the president of the United States and has not condemned a POTUS who continues to haphazardly vilify people who practice a religion other than Christianity.
For me, America’s premiere sporting event is tarnished by the involvement of people who demonstrate un-American values.
