Thank God, the super bowl is over!

I can’t take it anymore.

I turn off football for the two weeks of the super bowl.  I barely watch the game and don’t turn it on until at least 30 minutes AFTER the scheduled start of the game.  I very rarely have seen the end of a super bowl game.  I never watch halftime.  I never watch the pre-game.  I never watch the post-game.  I don’t watch or listen to or read the sports news the day after the super bowl.

A football game should be played during the day.

A championship football game should be played at the beginning of December (at the latest), not the beginning of February.

How does one become certified as an “expert?”  Who should be held responsible if that “expert” is wrong in his analysis?

I am as much a sports fan as the next guy, but what has our country become when we invest so much time, energy, and expense into one football game.

Think about it.

The game is played for the financial benefit of 32 already filthy rich, mostly white, mostly middle to senior aged male owners of the teams that own the National Football League and its marketing arm.  This is a league that has abandoned the very players (most struggling with physical infirmities) who made it into the conglomerate it has become.

This is a league that has held many cities hostage at the threat of leaving town if that city does not build a tax-payer-funded stadium.

This is a league where a still functioning 30-something-year-old stadium (Pontiac Silverdome) is not good enough because it does not have enough corporate boxes and was sold for a little more than half a million dollars.

This is a league that claims getting multiple head concussions has no direct result on later age problems such as dementia.

The mostly warm weather host city makes some money.

The participating football players make some money, but given the 32 owners are threatening a 2011 labor lockout, the players do not make all that much relatively speaking.

The mostly male, mostly white football writers and media people get a paid vacation at the expense of their mostly struggling newspapers, in a warm weather climate to attend parties and do very little work for a week.

The super bowl game itself has become a one play, one long commercial debacle that is painful, excruciating, and boring to watch.

Hats off to the New Orleans Saints but imagine if this country had invested the same amount of concerted time, money, and effort into that city after Hurricane Katrina.

Hats off to the New Orleans Saints but imagine if this country had invested the same amount of time, money, and effort into education and cancer and stopping animal cruelty and any of the many other ills that permeate our society.

Duane Thomas of the Dallas Cowboys said it best many years ago.  “If this is the ultimate game, why do they play it every year?”

Instead of becoming America’s national sports holiday, the super bowl has become America’s disgrace.

Sincerely,

George Sarkisian

Chief Statistical Analyst

High School to College to NFL success rate

Farmington Hills, Michigan 48334