Why I Was One of the Very Few People Not To Watch The Superbowl

This year's Superbowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers was watched in the U.S. by 111 million viewers which made it the most watched program in U.S television history.
 Here is why, this year, I was not among them.

1. Because I am a Cleveland Browns fan. That's my team from when I was a young kid and Uncle Bill would teach me all the complexities of the game and we'd watch the games every Sunday at Gran Downs house. (Bernie Kosar was a star!) If Cleveland had been in the Super Bowl, you could have bet your mother's sweet apple pie I would have been firmly, and with due reverence, planted in one of NYC's inumerable establishments with their hi-def flat screens t.v.'s, and overpriced beers and jubilent fan-folk. (The Browns finished 5-11 this year so the only way were going to the Super Bowl was if the luxury jets flying almost every other team crashed in fiery wreckage's.)

2. Because instead I went with a friend to a dive bar in the East Village where we sat down at a table in the empty side room and over the course of three glasses of Stella Artois, talked about family and books and writing and occupations and ambitions and museums and a whole spectrum of living life tossings back and forth to such an extent that time seemed to just fly on by. When we left, the game was already in the fourth quarter. By the time I got to the subway, the game was over.

(Though I am a die-hard Browns fan, I usually do watch the Super Bowl for the built-in drama, the mass spectacle of it, for the hell of it basically, but now that it's over and done with, and given the quiet, unforced conversation I had with another human being in the real physical world, I'm not sorry I missed it one bit.)
Whats more, at least I wasn't subjected to the pollution of the Black Eyed Peas at half-time or the overly-hyped commercials from corporations selling us things we really don't need while trying to make us laugh.
Next year I hope the Cleveland Browns get there. If they do, then I might just become ecstatically inebriated and hang on to every play with other fans and roar with wild gridiron abandon and point at the commercials in between and mutter once and awhile with a smile, "OK, that one was actually kinda funny."