Up until two years ago, I had watched nearly ever Super Bowl played since 1978, from the opening kickoff through the iconic halftime shows and postgame celebrations. But I decided that year to stage my first Super Bowl boycott. Having watched the Frontline documentary "Game of Denial," I had become disgusted with the way the NFL had placed its profits and popularity above the safety of its players, covering up the concussion crisis and allowing some of its legends to wither away in misery as fans forgot about them and turned their attention to a new generation of stars. I became equally disgusted with fans who still seemed preoccupied with their team's next roster move rather than the health of the players they watched each Sunday. I coined my boycott #SeeSelmaInstead, journeying with my family to an empty Walnut Creek theater to watch the riveting civil rights movie about Martin Luther King and the other civil rights activists who put their lives at risk to regain voting rights for blacks in the South (only to have the 49ers' Colin Kaepernick declare a half century later that voting doesn't matter for blacks but taking a knee during the national anthem does).
Last year, my family took a trip to the California Academy of Sciences on Super Sunday to see Claude, the center's albino alligator (#SeeClaudeInstead). And however I choose to spend this afternoon, it won't be watching the New England Patriots take on the Atlanta Falcons, interspersed by a neverending series of illogical commercials and Lady Gaga's halftime show.
It's not because I've sworn off football altogether. I haven't. I watched my share of Raiders games again this year and caught bits and pieces of a playoff game or two over the past few weeks. My disgust with the league's handling of the concussion crisis hasn't waned, especially after watching the movie "Concussion," which was even more damning than "League of Denial." But I don't believe the game is intrinsically flawed or immoral. The reality is that it has rescued countless Americans from poverty over the years and provided them lives they otherwise could only have dreamed about. Even for the vast majority of players who don't make it to the NFL, it has provided a pathway to college educations and taught them the values of self-discipline and teamwork. Its riches have been shared with charities such as the United Way, which have helped transform communities for the better. My feeling is that as long as its players know and understand the risks of playing the game to their health, and are willing to accept them, it is not my place to judge whether the game should be played or not. Sadly, up until a few years ago, that knowledge was hidden from them at every level, as well as the fans who support the game, in the most reprehensible fashion, and the NFL still has not been held to account for its sins.
But the primary reason I'll skip this year's Super Bowl is not so much the concussion crisis but what the game has come to represent and say about us as a nation, our decision to turn what should be national distractions into national obsessions while remaining blissfully unaware of and disengaged from the issues that affect our daily lives. As passionate as I was about the game growing up, with age came perspective, and a desire to funnel my passions toward the things in life that really matter. There was a time in my childhood where a heartbreaking loss by the Raiders or the 49ers could tarnish my day or week, and seriously affect my mood. Those days have long since passed. I now see football for what it is, a casual diversion from the serious aspects of life, but not a replacement.
I get the feeling, however, that for many, it is the serious things in life that have become the unwanted diversion as we spend more and more time fixated on the things that don't really matter, whether it's the Super Bowl, our favorite reality television show or deciding the next selfie to shoot. It's been said, not entirely jokingly, that football has become our national religion, and the Super Bowl serves as the holiest day of the year for that religion. I wouldn't so mind a national holiday centered on a sporting event if I felt that people paid as much attention to the important things in life as they do to the Super Bowl, if they cared as much about the fortunes of our society and world as they do about the fortunes of their favorite team.
Muhammad Ali's daughter put it better than me at the Women's March in Washington, D.C., a couple weeks ago:
"So many people binge watch television for hours and hours. They're in their telephones, they're on their computers on Facebook for hours ... they'll stand up for their sports teams, they know every rule of the NBA and the NFL, but they don't know how local government works."
Perhaps no event represents that sad social reality more than Super Bowl Sunday. We'll spend six hours or more today obsessing over every play, every commercial, every aspect of Lady Gaga's performance. And when it's over, we'll debate it all endlessly on Facebook or Twitter, then start gearing up for Spring Training or the next episode of Dancing with the Stars. And we won't think twice about whether that Trump Muslim ban is indeed Constitutional, because very few of us really understand what the Constitution is or what it represents. It's not a falsehood to say we know more about the rules governing our favorite sport than the rules governing our nation.
Tom Brady got a lot of attention last year for placing one of Trump's red "Make America Great Again" caps in his locker cubicle. So in that vein, here's my opinion of when America will truly be great again. When a majority of its citizens pay as much attention to any of the following as they do to Brady trying to win his fifth Super Bowl ring: The plight of the 8-year-old Syrian refugee banned from coming to this country because she's deemed a terrorist threat; or 20-plus first graders massacred in their classroom because of our nation's lack of any sensible gun laws; or those whose lives could be at risk if they lose their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act; or the fact that Climate Change is real and threatening the future of the planet, and our children's future along with it.
When a majority of those who gather for their Super Bowl parties today show they care as much about any of that or the countless other critical issues facing our society, I'll be happy to join them again in watching the game I grew up loving on its biggest day, because we all need a diversion from the serious side of life. The problem is when that diversion becomes an excuse to ignore the world around you. I believe a big reason the nation is so polarized today is not simply that we don't understand one another or see the critical issues differently; it's that we simply have different priorities: There are those who value knowledge and truth and are engaged with the hard realities of society, and there are those who simply don't give a damn. They will elect a president more for what they saw him do on Celebrity Apprentice than what he knows about our nation's problems and how to solve them.
To many, such talk probably comes across as more liberal arrogance, so-called intellectuals looking down on the masses. But I don't see it that way at all. Differing ideologies and views on how to make a more perfect union, from both the right and left, are healthy and important when it comes from a place of basic information and understanding of our reality, traditions and system of governance. A democracy can only function if its society is informed, and too many in this country have made it clear that they just don't give a damn about being informed, because obsessing over football or Celebrity Apprentice is just so much easier and more fun. And then every four years, they decide to vote out of ignorance, or bitterness, or hatred, or an acerbic Tweet, before shifting their focus back to our national religion. In so doing, they've become pawns of the political and corporate elite, manipulated by a clever Tweet or sound bite, deceived by falsehoods that could be easily disproven by a little research, tricked into consistently voting against their own interests and blaming the wrong people for our flawed state of affairs.
How many football fans will yell at their television screens today, voicing every passion they can muster, only to turn silent on Monday morning to the myriad topics of national concern that demand our attention? How many will be able to explain in exhaustive detail the rule behind every penalty flag thrown on the field, but will wake up Monday morning knowing little or nothing about the rules that govern our land and protect our rights? How many will celebrate a player's game-changing touchdown today, or condemn his ill-timed turnover, with screams of joy and frustration, but not show an ounce of compassion for him when he's diagnosed with CTE in a decade or two? The answers to those questions also provide the answer to why this lifelong football fan will be skipping the Super Bowl again this year.
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