Geezer alert! Some of us simply find the whole Super Bowl religion puzzling at best, deeply disturbing at worst. We are a nation in near-total collapse, being led into hell by a lunatic, and griping about the high cost of everything,d and yet this bizarre event rakes in billions and is treated like a national holiday.
Yes, I'll eat some guac and maybe even a brat -- hey, my husband was born in Green Bay, it's in his DNA -- but when they unearth our fallen empire centuries from now they'll trace our decline to our obsession with football, like the Romans with gladiators. And to crotch-clutching, breast baring 'artists'! And to Fox TV 'news'. And social media . . . and and and . . . Ok, I still watch Prince's half-time show every so often, just because it was amazing.
Kudos to Bad Bunny for his rise to fame, and anything that gets MAGAs undies in a bundle is fine by me. But seriously, Kid Rock?
This may interest you, from my Facebook post on Jan 17. BTW, I grew up in Minneapolis and live in the Seattle area:
𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀
from Copilot (something to think about)
There’s a pattern that scholars, therapists, and cultural critics have noticed: American men often display extraordinary fluency, passion, and analytical skill in one domain — sports — while appearing disengaged or even apathetic toward the civic, historical, or intellectual life of the country.
That contrast is structural.
🏟️ Sports as the “safe” arena for intelligence and emotion
Many men who can’t or won’t talk about politics, ethics, current events, or history can instantly deliver:
- player stats going back 20 years
- salary cap implications
- draft strategy
- referee rule interpretations
- injury analytics
- coaching philosophy
That’s not trivial knowledge. It’s pattern recognition, memory, analysis, and debate — all the cognitive tools needed for civic life. But they’re being deployed in a symbolic world rather than the real one.
Why? Because sports is:
- Non-threatening — no moral stakes, no risk of being wrong about something that matters
- Emotionally permissible — men can yell, cry, celebrate, mourn
- Socially rewarded — knowing sports makes you “one of the guys”
- Predictable — rules are clear, outcomes finite, narratives simple
Politics, history, and economics are the opposite: ambiguous, morally charged, and uncomfortable.
🧩 American masculinity has been engineered to channel curiosity and passion into one narrow, culturally sanctioned outlet.
When a society:
- discourages emotional literacy
- mocks intellectual curiosity as “nerdy”
- treats civic engagement as optional
- and teaches boys that their value lies in dominance, not reflection
…you end up with men who are brilliant analysts of the NFL but feel incompetent or unsafe engaging with the world beyond it.
This isn’t stupidity. It’s displacement.
🪶 Are we a nation of disengaged, lost men?
A more precise way to put it: We’re a nation where millions of men were never given the tools, permission, or cultural encouragement to invest their intelligence in anything but symbolic combat.
Sports becomes:
- a refuge
- a coping mechanism
- a substitute for community
- a place to feel mastery in a world where many feel powerless
And when life feels overwhelming, sports becomes a comforting parallel universe where the stakes are high enough to feel meaningful but low enough to be safe.
🔍 The uncomfortable truth
If you took the average American man’s sports knowledge and redirected even 20% of that cognitive horsepower toward:
- local government
- constitutional literacy
- economic systems
- historical context
- technological change
…the country would look very different.
The issue isn’t that men lack capacity.
It’s that the culture has trained them to misallocate it.
Geezer alert! Some of us simply find the whole Super Bowl religion puzzling at best, deeply disturbing at worst. We are a nation in near-total collapse, being led into hell by a lunatic, and griping about the high cost of everything,d and yet this bizarre event rakes in billions and is treated like a national holiday.
Yes, I'll eat some guac and maybe even a brat -- hey, my husband was born in Green Bay, it's in his DNA -- but when they unearth our fallen empire centuries from now they'll trace our decline to our obsession with football, like the Romans with gladiators. And to crotch-clutching, breast baring 'artists'! And to Fox TV 'news'. And social media . . . and and and . . . Ok, I still watch Prince's half-time show every so often, just because it was amazing.
Kudos to Bad Bunny for his rise to fame, and anything that gets MAGAs undies in a bundle is fine by me. But seriously, Kid Rock?
That said, go Hawks!
This may interest you, from my Facebook post on Jan 17. BTW, I grew up in Minneapolis and live in the Seattle area:
𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀
from Copilot (something to think about)
There’s a pattern that scholars, therapists, and cultural critics have noticed: American men often display extraordinary fluency, passion, and analytical skill in one domain — sports — while appearing disengaged or even apathetic toward the civic, historical, or intellectual life of the country.
That contrast is structural.
🏟️ Sports as the “safe” arena for intelligence and emotion
Many men who can’t or won’t talk about politics, ethics, current events, or history can instantly deliver:
- player stats going back 20 years
- salary cap implications
- draft strategy
- referee rule interpretations
- injury analytics
- coaching philosophy
That’s not trivial knowledge. It’s pattern recognition, memory, analysis, and debate — all the cognitive tools needed for civic life. But they’re being deployed in a symbolic world rather than the real one.
Why? Because sports is:
- Non-threatening — no moral stakes, no risk of being wrong about something that matters
- Emotionally permissible — men can yell, cry, celebrate, mourn
- Socially rewarded — knowing sports makes you “one of the guys”
- Predictable — rules are clear, outcomes finite, narratives simple
Politics, history, and economics are the opposite: ambiguous, morally charged, and uncomfortable.
🧩 American masculinity has been engineered to channel curiosity and passion into one narrow, culturally sanctioned outlet.
When a society:
- discourages emotional literacy
- mocks intellectual curiosity as “nerdy”
- treats civic engagement as optional
- and teaches boys that their value lies in dominance, not reflection
…you end up with men who are brilliant analysts of the NFL but feel incompetent or unsafe engaging with the world beyond it.
This isn’t stupidity. It’s displacement.
🪶 Are we a nation of disengaged, lost men?
A more precise way to put it: We’re a nation where millions of men were never given the tools, permission, or cultural encouragement to invest their intelligence in anything but symbolic combat.
Sports becomes:
- a refuge
- a coping mechanism
- a substitute for community
- a place to feel mastery in a world where many feel powerless
And when life feels overwhelming, sports becomes a comforting parallel universe where the stakes are high enough to feel meaningful but low enough to be safe.
🔍 The uncomfortable truth
If you took the average American man’s sports knowledge and redirected even 20% of that cognitive horsepower toward:
- local government
- constitutional literacy
- economic systems
- historical context
- technological change
…the country would look very different.
The issue isn’t that men lack capacity.
It’s that the culture has trained them to misallocate it.
What are your thoughts?
Some of us simply don't care for Bad Bunny music....a choice made long before the Grammy's.
So, you're saying the "World is Watching" a declining power distracted with frivolity and decadence? Hard to disagree.
I must be getting old, not really familiar with this Bad Bunny 🐰