I used to watch sports on TV. But doing so is another activity the internet has rendered unnecessary. The three to four hours spent watching a series of commercials interspersed with a few minute of football is time that could be spent in a useful endeavor like a long nap. You could record the game and fast forward through it to eliminate the commercials. But far better, and shorter, to wait for the game’s conclusion and watch its highlights on the many videos that appear soon after it’s over. Any football, basketball, etc game usually has only a minute or two of interesting action.
Of course, there’s the random nature of sports. I’ve already written about chance and baseball, but the consideration applies to all sports at the elite level. The winner is the luckier on that day. Take yesterday’s NFL divisional playoff. The Patriots beat the Chiefs because they won a coin toss. The Patriots called heads and heads it was. Accordingly, the got the ball at the start of overtime and led by their great quarterback, Tom Brady, they scored a touchdown and won the game. The other great quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, never got onto the field after the coin toss. Both defenses were so tired that it was a near certainty that the winner of the coin toss would likewise win the game. The NFL should change its overtime rules so that both teams get to touch the ball before a winner is declared.
But the coin toss issue was meager rations compare to what happened earlier in the other divisional playoff. The New Orleans Saints lost the game because a referee blew a penalty call so egregiously bad by its absence that a patient with macular degeneration would have called this foul. Actually there were two penalties that the LA Rams defensive back committed. Both pass interference and a helmet to helmet hit were made on the same play. See the video below.
The NFL is run by a lot of old men who have trouble using a smartphone. Hence they have not allowed video monitoring of penalty or non penalty plays. Had such a review been permitted the Saints would have almost certainly won the game.
So one team is in the Super Bowl because of a vision challenged official where it will play against a team that’s there because they called heads. The only reason to watch the upcoming match is to view the creative commercials that are a feature of the Super Bowl. You could record the game and fast forward through the play and watch the ads – a reverse of the usual procedure. Better yet take a nap and eat a pizza. If anything interesting happens you can watch it later with an expenditure of just a minute or two.
