I was done with the Super Bowl a long time ago

But Trump, his aides and many of his supporters haven’t purged contempt from our politics. They’ve mainstreamed it. Purified it. Industrialized it. It’s their push-a-button pushback against everyone who challenges them and any circumstances that threaten to undermine them, an all-purpose way to pivot from the substance of a situation to an evasive and obfuscating ill will. Envelop everything in indiscriminate animosity and nothing real survives. Frank Bruni, NY Times 2/16/26

The truth is, I stopped watching the Super Bowl after my best friend Joey died.

I hadn't really been watching football after Joe Montana retired.

Then Joey was diagnosed with lung cancer.

One way he responded to this news was to purchase a large screen tv for him and his family room. That meant we watched the Super Bowl at Joey’s every year. And Joey made his famous quesadillas.

We did that for 15 years until Joey left us in November 2021.

Because I had already lost interest in football, I really haven’t watched much since then.

I won’t waste too much time explaining why I don’t watch football and why I believe football is wrong for America.

So, if you like to watch football . . . watch football. I know it won’t be going away soon.

I do believe football is a horribly violent team sport that glorifies the taking of land or territory by force in order to “win the game.”

The only thing we don’t do when we win is plant a flag, although spiking the ball and other player celebrations mimic the idea each time they do it.

We know football has very real physical impacts on the players.

One player basically died on live television before being revived on the turf.

In one of those sad coincidences I just happened to turn on the TV to that game live when the incident occurred on camera. I watched as the team circled around something and I knew exactly what had happened.

As an all star baseball coach I was trained that pitchers were particularly vulnerable to a direct hit to the chest by a batted ball. Such contact could stop their heart from beating.

I knew immediately this is what had happened that day on the football field.

Former players have committed suicide, and some have committed murder and other crimes. Many players live a life filled with physical struggles and/or mental depression caused by head and other bodily football injuries—before and after retirement.

What do they get for these traumas? Fame, money, and all that goes with it.

I’m not paying to watch that anymore.

Wait, hasn’t that happened during immigration raids since the MAGites took power in America?

Assassinations on live television.

At least they didn’t show the bullet go through his neck.

Or, did they? Did you look? Did you look it up online after not being able to see it live?

You could say human dignity was gone from the White House even before the murders in the streets of America.

I’ll go ahead and say it. There is no human dignity left in America if you are watching the modern day Trail of Tears where American citizens are being put into jail for expressing their opinions on social media, sent to another country because of a failed American immigration process system, or actually killed.

If you don’t think the MAGite alternative half time show, and viewer disgust with Bad Bunny are a symptom of a highly politicized sporting event, then you are not paying close enough attention.

As long as mass advertising by regional and national firms is the major support of papers, the economies of scale will result in monopoly papers. Until we have papers that are supported mainly by subscribers, I see no change in monopoly daily printed news. —Ben H. Bagdikian Journal of Communication, Spring 1980

To understand Badkikian’s quote today just remove the word “papers” and insert your choice of “publishers,” “news outlets,” “media networks,” “social media platforms,” “technology companies,” “political parties” . . . and so on.

Think of all those executives visiting the White House these days vying for control over what we see on TV or online, and all the information we consume every day.

That’s why I’m looking elsewhere for real entertainment and real information. It’s not easy finding it these days with or without cable TV.

America’s desensitization to violence goes well beyond football. Hollywood can’t make a film without violence.

Add to that the politics and the massive introduction of gambling to sports, and the fact that we are now paying professional salaries for what used to be considered “student-athletes” in college.

What does that get us?

There is so much money on the line in American sports today. Corporate America will do whatever it can to ensure the mass spectacle of the Super Bowl stays up front and center for the American viewers.

It even “trades” the broadcast rights to the game from year to year so all the media can make it’s money and all their favorite politicians can control the messages Americans—and the rest of the world—receive about the United States of America.

The Super Bowl is the largest communal spectacle in American culture and it’s now so politicized all we are left with is a poorly played game and arguments about the quality of—or racism in—the halftime show.

I’m not paying to watch that anymore.

The Fox network received over $270,000,000 in advertising revenue for the 2011 Super Bowl broadcast compared to the $800,000,000 in ad revenue they collected during the Super Bowl in 2025. There were a record 127.7 million viewers of that game.

NBCUniversal sold out all available ad space for the February 2026 broadcast by September of 2025. Some advertisers paid $10 million for 30 seconds of eyeball time with America and the world during the show. Viewership was down to 124.9 million as compared to the 2025 game but the numbers were the second largest audience in the history of the game.

With these kinds of numbers it should be no surprise that America’s public broadcasting network can’t compete for viewers or money.

The Fox network settled a libel suit in 2023. The TV network made almost as much as that settlement agreement on the 2025 Super Bowl. The settlement itself was an admission that Fox lied extensively on television about election fraud before, during, and after the 2020 Presidential election.

I’m not paying to watch that anymore.

I’ve known for some time I was not getting much value or quality from cable tv service.

Watching sports in particular is so difficult to the point where a paid subscription is required to watch almost any game you want to see. There is no more turn on the tv and watch the game through the commercials. Now, you have to pay a subscription AND watch the commercials—unless you pay extra to avoid the commercials.

Last year, I couldn't watch the San Francisco Giants baseball team because I was locked out of the NBC Bay Area channels on my cable service without a paid subscription for that.

Then I bought the entire MLB season on MLB.Com and found myself still locked out of Giants games because I was considered in market even though I don’t even live in Sacramento much less San Francisco!

In a desperate moment, I bought a monthly Giants pass to see those games except when they were broadcast on Apple TV, in which case I couldn’t watch them because . . . well you get it.

Turning that off reduced my monthly costs by 50%.

I’m not paying for that anymore.

I got a Roseville Public Library card when I first moved to the area. Previously, I went to a Roseville Library at Maidu park. Two weeks ago I found the older library in downtown Roseville, so I decided that was the best place to go after turning off my cable tv and turning in the box at the local store on Greenback Lane.

The downtown library is a beautiful building, and such a welcoming place. There were plenty of people there reading, looking for books or media, or browsing the used bookstore.

I found two books myself and checked them out. I’ve already spent several hours with these books and I am very happy to spend my time and money on that!

I always promoting and voting for library taxes!

When I got back home from the library, I pulled out a DVD player and a couple of old movies. I decided to watch the first hour of Fiddler on the Roof. Watching that movie reminded me of Jon Lovitz shouting “Acting!” on Saturday Night Live back in the day—when acting mattered. When words and lyrics meant something and performers worked hard to achieve the meaning of those words through their portrayal of the human interactions that went with the words.

I’ve got plenty of DVDs and my libraries have many more. I should be fine, as far as entertainment is concerned, for a long time. I don’t watch too many movies anymore mostly because I don’t like all the violence and I don’t want to support a media industry that panders to it.

My primary motivation for disconnecting from cable TV is focused on the idea that too much of the information out in the world today is tainted by what Bruni said was intended to “Envelop everything in indiscriminate animosity.”

MAGites are now programmed for this political action. The one’s I know immediately went on their social media platforms to join their friends in rants putting down the half time show and promoting the truly awful alternative programming.

All of their comments were pre-packaged talking points designed to make their perceived enemies look evil and un-American.

Just like they did when Colin Kaepernick took a knee at a football game.

I’m not paying to watch that anymore.

Some of my closest friends ask me why I don’t just reduce my time on social media before turning off my cable tv.

I see all the media as an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to communicate my ideas. I also believe people who don’t agree with others political ideas can learn to value each other in meaningful ways despite the struggle over the differences.

So I try to communicate positive ideas in the battle against “indiscriminate animosity.”

And I am not alone. At least there were those who came before me.

In his conclusion to Four arguments for the elimination of television (1977), Jerry Mander writes:

Imagine a world free of television.

Once rid of television, our information field will instantly widen to include aspects of life which have been discarded and forgotten. Human beings would rediscover facets of experience we’ve permitted to lie dormant.

The nature of the political process would surely change, making possible not only more subtle perspectives, but also the possibility of content over style.

Learning would reemerge to substitute for brainwashing. Individual knowledge and the collective knowledge of communities and friends and peers would again flower as monolithic, institutional, surrogate knowledge declined.

Overall, chances are excellent that human beings, once outside the cloud of television images, would be happier then they’ve been of late, once again living a reality that is less artificial, less imposed, and more responsive to personal action.

Football isn’t going away and neither is television. But we do have a responsibility as American citizens to know the difference between true and false information.

This is where America is failing.

This is where we are all failing.

In a 2008 talk, American educator Orville Schell asked a group of high school students to think about whether or not Democracy can survive (in 2008) after the demise of newspapers and even television news as we knew it at that time. He concludes by saying: “Jefferson said where the Press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.”

Today, all is safe only if there is an educated citizenry of people who are able to read and understand the information being presented.

In my writing from August, 2025, I added these comments:

I’m sure we have not reached safety in the American information and media system today.

Does the Internet provide the same range of voices and information we need to be well informed? Are we informed as we should be as a people in this country and, if not, what are the consequences of this new reality? Does Democracy really exist anymore?

Last week a friend posted something on Facebook about political moves by the current Federal government to eliminate mail-in ballots in American elections. I mistakenly chose to comment about the fact that her post was quoting false information from the current White House. I shared the actual real information, which I quoted, and linked to, in my comment.

Shortly after my comment, a couple of her friends started a quick back in forth of comments mocking me. Then, like she was spiking the ball after a Super Bowl touchdown, one of them finished by saying she never argues with a “fool.”

What would you say to such indiscriminate animosity?

How does Democracy exist in that political reality?

What do we do when there are more than one realities in our common social/political understanding of our society?

What do we do when someone else’s personal, economic, social, and religious beliefs become the law of the land—and you become persecuted by their daily actions?

How do we move forward as a society under these conditions?

What do you think?

I have had more than 10 days without cable tv now and the results are as expected. It’s not good. I didn’t see or miss the football game.

I am glad my cable tv box is gone and I’m enjoying the two books I got from the library. I’m busy working on the farm to get ready for spring flowers and more.

I’m just worried about the future in a world where anyone thinks I’m a fool, and what they think is real and good—is what it is—all wrong.

Thanks for reading!