The Shrinking Superbowl?

At present, the most popular televised sporting event in the United States is the Superbowl.  For those readers who do not live in the U.S., the Superbowl is the final championship event of the American football season.  American football is an interesting cultural invention, springing as it did out of the "muscular Christianity" promoted by prominent 19th-century white American and British theologians who were unwilling to submit to the New Testament's commandments to nonviolence.  (See also "In the Hands of God: Theology and the Benefits of American Football", Ethan Levin, Harvard University, 2022; and The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports, Paul Emory Putz, Oxford University Press, 2024).  Because this "muscular Christianity" rejects nonviolence, American football is surprisingly violent - as seen in the large number of concussion injuries sustained in youth football such as played in Pop Warner leagues.  It should be no surprise that the rate of concussions increases as athletes grow, mature, and become stronger.  Thus high school football players face greater concussion risk than Pop Warner players, and the risk increases still further for college football players.  The grand prize for violence (and concussions) goes to the NFL, where really big guys are paid lots of money to crash into each other as hard as they can.  Typical performance statistics for one of these typical living crash test dummies are as follows (information taken from gobigrecruiting.com):

• Height: 6'5"
• Weight: 280 lbs.
• 40 yard dash time: 5.0 seconds
• Bench press: 320 lbs.
• Squat: 450 lbs.

As for the Superbowl itself, according to one source, over the last fifteen years viewership has never been less than 100 million.  According to several sources, the 2025 Superbowl was the most watched event in television history in the United States.  However, most media sources report that the 2026 Superbowl suffered a ratings decline.  The most optimistic estimates state that the decline was no more than two percent.  However, other sources question both this statistic and the methodology by which it was derived.  These other sources estimate that the actual decline in viewership was closer to ten percent.  (See also "Samba TV Shows Second Year of Viewership Decline for Super Bowl Halftime Show as Media Touts Record Bad Bunny Viewership", in which more rigorous tracking methods produced an estimate of the actual decline at 13 percent.)

It is interesting to read of the reasons given by certain media pundits for the viewership decline.  Some commentators state that this year's game was simply not that interesting because of weak player and team performance.  Other commentators point to a weakness of the halftime show which featured some guy named "Bad Bunny."  (Who is he? Never heard of him.)  Some have gotten a bit closer to the truth of the matter in their noting that Gen Z seems increasingly disinclined to get wrapped up in sports at all.  But almost none of the usual commentators seems to have noticed that an increasing number of Americans of all ages are consciously, openly, vocally disconnecting from the mainstream American culture that has been vomited onto them by the organs of that mainstream American culture.  This includes an increasing number of people who are choosing not to celebrate the 4th of July, not to participate in Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping orgies, and ... not to watch the Superbowl!  As for myself, I don't give two cents and a stick of chewing gum about American football or the Superbowl, and thus I haven't watched a single televised football game in a very, very long time.  American football stands in my mind as a symbol and symptom of the emptiness and uselessness of modern mainstream American culture.  Perhaps this year's ratings decline is a sign that other Americans are coming to the same conclusion.  I can't help but wonder if the decline in this year's Superbowl ratings isn't also a collective act of strategic nonviolent resistance - in withdrawing economic and cultural cooperation and patronage from the systems of our oppressors.  Perhaps it's a message to the masters of our present economy that the days of fun and games are over for them as long as they continue to support a murderous and corrupt President and his political party.  Time will tell...