Yeah, I know! The Super Bowl is 4+ hours of commercials, with brief interruptions for violence!

[Zalatix]

1. I tend to despise jocks, especially paid jocks, but recently I've had to rethink things

These jocks make nothing compared to the owners of the company.

These owners work them to half to death - quite literally, if you count all the injuries - and many of them don't make a lot of money (except the handful of superstar players). A lot of sports players come out of their career broken and unable to make money elsewhere - which is fine, unless some vampire has come along and spent (or helped you to spend) away all your money.

When it comes down to the paid jocks versus the owners I'm not going to suddenly decide to break with my tradition of siding with the workers. High paid or not, those jocks are workers making more value for their bosses than is paid out to themselves, and their bosses don't have to end their career with crippling injuries*. The head injuries and the ruining of people's bodies has to stop. But... what can we do about it? Head injuries in sports is like bullet wounds in combat. People get entertained by seeing someone get clobbered in a good hard tackle. They pay good money for that. Safer football means lost profits. Which is another reason why I never watch football.

* Of course the owner could sprain his/her wrist counting all that money.