The Super Bowl gets more viewers and more ad money than anything on television. Here's a letter that I sent to The Los Angeles Times:
Regular exercise improves cardiorespiratory fitness, increases generation of new neurons in our brains, improves memory and executive function and delays aging- but you have to keep it up and many of us won’t do it unless we are part of a group. Vigorous dancing is one of the best forms of exercise and is pro-social.
Sitting is bad for our health. The Super Bowl is a spectacle to promote ads and messages that support materialism, machismo, contempt for ‘losers’ and a dog eat dog society. Barry Goldman (The not-so-Super Bowl) has it right. Americans are passive consumers of pseudo-events who ignore long-term needs. Try Googling “Superb Owl” – your masters know that you want “Super Bowl” and that’s what they give you. Just say no. Goldman’s idea is to get cold, tired and hungry doing something useful at a pace that he controls- that’s what’s important, even if you hate winter. That’s constructive reality. Not the New Jersey circus.
I'm a sports nut. I played high school and college football (good high school player, mediocre college player) and enjoyed it. None of my children wanted to play football, all, including my daughter, played and enjoyed soccer.
I say that the Super Bowl is about commercialism, domination and machismo. As Pam Creedon says, breasts are out, but erections are in.. The Barry Goldman Super Bowl piece that prompted my letter is here. There's no justification for taxpayer subsidy of any pro sport, not when many Americans lack health care and many children don't get quality education. There is much that is wrong with university sports as well. The University of North Carolina recently suspended whistle blower Mary Willingham’s work on the poor reading skills of many university athletes. Steven Colbert covered her work.