The Super Bowl has got to be the most worthless event of the year if your hometown team isn't playing. Consider:
1. If you miss the game, there will be endless recaps for the next week, and then both highlights and the whole game will play on the NFL network for months.
2. The halftime show will suck. That's because young musicians have no talent, they just look good on video. When they get the old guys, you've heard all their stuff before, and they sounded much better when they were young.
3. The commercials will be recapped and replayed on network news (yes, that's what passes for news these days), so there is no reason to watch if for the commercials any more. The commercials are on YouTube anyway.
4. It is not likely to be a good game. Most Super Bowls aren't. Most regular games aren't either, but the difference is I usually have a team to root for, so the outcome matters to me whether it is close or not. Which leads me to...
5. Both teams suck. I'd rather watch a 3 hour interview with Sarah Palin about her favorite Russian novels than see either side win.
Daniel Boorstin called events like the Super Bowl pseudo-events. That is, events that are not news in the sense that they are spontaneous events; instead they are events planned out specifically to attract news coverage. Boorstin argued that pseudo-events should be distrusted, since they are staged specifically to shape public opinion and behavior, and not because they are important in themselves. People who are not careful about pseudo-events, Boorstin cautioned, risk being manipulated by them.