I’m a contradiction and a hypocrite. I hate the NFL. I’m deeply offended by its violence on and off the field, its unwarranted importance in our culture, its faux patriotism, its virtue signaling for profit, its relative lack of flea flickers, its Aaron Rodgers, its Bosas, its Trump dancers, its Tyreek Hill, its coterie of billionaire owners, its Sunday monopoly, its salary for Tony Romo, its Brittany Mahomes, its TSwift cutaways, its relationship to wagering, its Pat McAfee, its punting in general, its military endorsement, its Nike, its Michelle Tafoya, its Jerry Jones, its blue tent, its tush push, its nepotism, its racism, its facism. But I watch nearly every Sunday and read about it the rest of the week, in season and out. I allow myself $75 per season on Draft Kings, which usually gets me to Week 3. I’m a self-loathing fan.
I don’t know why I still tune in. I like to think it’s for the cultural criticism or for maintaining conversations with my students, my friends, and my colleagues on Monday mornings. The NFL is the trainwreck of 2026 America I can’t look away from. I don’t feel good about it. I tried to deal with it in therapy once, but my analyst was a placekicker for the Falcons.
I’m going to make chili and cheer for a tie. Wouldn’t we all just rather watch Kid Rock and Bad Bunny in a celebrity boxing match?
LAST WEEK’S ESSAY
There wasn’t one.
So, this week I was going to publish an essay on the Super Bowl and what it truly represents. I wrote it. It was, arguably, well-written. But it wasn’t good. It wasn’t me, really. It lacked personality. So, I scrapped it after a long consultation with my confidant/advisor/editor/brother-in-arms, Rattlesnake Hallelujah. I fought him on it, but, as per usual, he was right and saved me from myself. But here are some bullet points:
The Super Bowl represents the ethos of our collective complicity.
The league is composed of thirty-some billionaires and their hobby franchises, mostly old white men of unimaginable wealth from other undertakings indulging themselves in the opulence of trialaism. The newly minted trillion-dollar valued Walmart family owns two teams, the same Walmart that has been held civilly responsible for contributing to the opioid epidemic and has tens of thousands of workers who receive SNAP or Medicaid, reflecting wages low enough to require public support.
We have become servants to the uber-wealthy. Each NFL team is valued at at least $5 billion, even the Browns. Every team owner is a billionaire.
Attending a game is a privilege for the few. Some estimates that factor in ticket prices, parking, food, and drinks put the average family-of-four bill for an NFL game at roughly $1,339.
Even watching on TV, once free over terrestrial airwaves, now costs $1,300 to $1,500 per year to genuinely have access to every live game, regardless of platform, without free trials or promotional pricing.
Of the thirty stadiums hosting NFL teams today, only three were entirely privately funded at the time of construction: the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers’ SoFi Stadium, the New York Giants and New York Jets’ MetLife Stadium, and the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium.
The other twenty-seven current stadia were constructed with at least some public funding (taxes, bonds, infrastructure subsidies, etc.). Very few of the cities or counties that approved public funding for NFL stadiums were running large general-operating surpluses at the time of the deals, and many weren’t in strong fiscal shape either.
What drove the subsidies wasn’t budgetary capacity but political competition and projections of future economic activity.
Every luxury box, every state-of-the-art field turf, every jumbotron is a transit line unextended, a public school gone hungry for arts programs and up-to-date textbooks, affordable housing unsubsidized.
Harm is diffused across systems, not by a single act but by its accumulation. Labor is spectral, on the fields in bodies praised, replaced, then forgotten, and our own labor, the weeks required to afford our fandom.
Perhaps the greatest trick the NFL’s biggest fan, corporate America, has pulled on the populace is to convince us that commercials have value, that they require and demand our attention.
Super Bowl ads are noted for their own opulence and price tags that could solve a laundry list of societal problems. They’re released before the game, consumed like nachos and Bud Light, and immortalized on YouTube. Our biggest stars and celebrities shill for corporate interests that feed on our debt and desire for a common life.
I can’t wait to see who’s selling me Ozempic on Sunday: Oprah? Elvis? Jesus? Brands reanimate feelings without substance, and sentiment stands in place of justice. We should be offended by the obesity of the spectacle, but instead we feed it and ourselves to exhaustion, to complicity, to acceptance.
NEXT WEEK’S ESSAY
I got something cooking, other than chili. I promise.
AWP BALTIMORE
I’ll be in Charm City in early March for AWP 2026, moderating a panel on adjuncts in the world of writers with my colleagues on the AWP Adjunct Writers Caucus. If you’d like to learn more, check out our newsletter here.
THE BIG GAME IS EVERY NIGHT
Jason Molina gets it.
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