i'm sure the majority of you will be in front of your televisions or your plate of wings and Guinness, or IPA or—heaven forbid, Bud Light watching the largest sporting event that this country produces, the National Football League's Super Bowl...

while you sift through the hours of faux-inspiration, melodrama and inanity of the hours upon hours of pre-game in anticipation of an overblown spectacle of perfect set pieces and glitzy advertising, i'd like you to turn it off. Yup, do it, turn the fucking thing off. I know its hard to fathom...

'guy, its the Super bowl, what's wrong with you?!'...

there's nothing wrong, i just think you might want to get used to it...

the NFL and its consortium of owners will make the filthiest amount of money you've ever seen or heard of by the time a pigskin is touched by a single football player tonight, let alone how much they will make by tomorrow morning. These owners, purveyors of "the most popular sport in America" will then take a months off at their palatial estates and beach front or mountain getaways and head to Manhattan to cry poor...

the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association is expiring. 2010 stands to be what is being called and "uncapped" year. You see, since 1982 the NFL has operated under a salary cap, which sets a specific dollar amount that each team must adhere to when setting its roster. Next season there will be no cap, players can sign to highest bidder, similar to baseball, but really, only for the year. In 2011, the CBA expires for real and then everything will stop. The owners will tell you that economic conditions will force them to tighten their belts and institute more stringent guidelines in managing payroll. This, by the way, after signing the most lucrative television contract in sports history with a stipulation that even if games are not played, the four networks involved are still required to hold up their financial responsibility to the league. It makes a lockout almost an inevitable event...

this is the microcosm of Capitalism. There is never enough. Greed outweighs good sense, and the common man is left holding the bag. You already pay for your TV, whether its cable, or dish, the majority of Americans pay out for what they watch. Some broadcast networks demanded a surcharge to cable that would be passed on to its customers to have the right to air these networks. As if advertising revenue had hit its ceiling, i mean; how else can they bleed a penny out of the American people...

this is what the NFL and its owners are planning to do. They are planning to lockout players from their facilities, fully prepared to let 2011 come and go with nary a game, while still getting paid for a product they are not producing, all the while blaming the greed of the players...

really...

now, i know, athletes get paid a lot of money. The likes of you and i will ever see such paychecks in our lives, and there is some give and take to be had, especially in a sport like baseball where athletes have enjoyed unprecedented wealth in their sport for over 30 years, but in football things are a little different. The average football players career is 4 years long. Most first year players do not get the million dollar, multi-year deals, with million dollar signing bonuses and those that do, the Eli Mannings of the world, sign multi-year multi-million dollar contracts, only to be wary of the fact that their ownership, at anytime, can revoke the contract as if it never existed. There is no such thing as a guaranteed contract in the NFL. Good players with smart agents can negotiate guaranteed money in the form of signing bonuses and percentages per year of the contract, but tell that to the 23 year-old who was just cut and is forced to find a job working at the Jamba Juice. Tell it to Kurt Warner 15 years ago, when he was bagging groceries, or 5 years ago when he was cut by the New York Football Giants. He is a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback, and not once in his career was he ever sure he was going to have a job from year to year. The owners of your favorite teams are about strong armed these players into eating shit, so they can take more money out of your pocket...

listen, if you're cool with that, than have at it. Eat your wings, drink your beer and enjoy what could very well be a good football game tonight. Laugh at the commercials, discuss whether Jim Nantz should be doing play by play over the likes of Greg Gumbel, and cringe at the fact that Roger Daltrey, (and i consider myself a fan of the Who), has completely lost the ability to sing Who songs. But even if you do watch, i implore you keep an eye on the dollar signs bouncing across the screen for those 3 1/2 hours, and think about your place in it all and whether it was really all worth the time and effort...

hey, look, i won't need football in 2011, the Knicks will be well on there way to a 55 win season by then on their way to fight for an NBA title. i don't need some over-orchestrated game played with increasingly suffocating restraints on gameplay to get by. i've lived through two NFL strikes/lockouts, and i am still standing here...

truth be told, i'll be watching the game tonight, there will be nothing else on. Its too cold out and its the one thing that won't cost me any money—directly that is. The Cat Mom has been excited thinking about where she can eat in solitude this evening after her time at the kitty hospital is done 2,500 miles away. The streets of Tucson will be empty but for her Volvo tonight. She has no want, need or understanding of football, as she is not alone. There are billions of people who could care less that 106 men will be playing for a championship tonight. But all of those people are effected by the ripple and undertow that is the greed and gluttony created by such an event...

maybe there will be an Pauly Shore movie marathon to check out. One can only hope...