It's Sunday night, and I am preparing for the next school week. I read from textbooks and type up class responses. I watched "True Detective" (everyone should be watching) with my older brother. I went out with my fiancé into Baltimore, where we saw many different venues and options for our wedding.

It wasn't until late in the day when I realized "Hold on…is the Super Bowl going on right now?"

As Americans, we all know what the Super Bowl is. The cornerstone game of the NFL has become a pseudo-holiday to many people in this country and around the world. I remember going to Super Bowl parties throughout my life. Families, friends, and work colleagues would all be present. This year was different; I had no interest in watching the game or the commercials. Why?

The NFL is a bad product.

While the NFL is still the most popular sports league in the country, there are problems rising to the forefront. Whether it is horrible referee calls or new game rules that give an advantage to an offensive player, fans of the sport continue to say that the NFL product is slipping.

Whether these opinions are true or not, the fact remains that Super Bowl ratings did not break 100 million viewers this year, the lowest in over a decade.

The Kaepernick effect

Who would have thought that kneeling down would have caused such a controversy? Colin Kaepernick has not been in the league since 2016, yet he is still the most recognizable face of the NFL whether they like it or not. I feel like if the NFL really wanted him to go away, they could have put him on a team and let the public be satisfied with him being in the league.

Time has shown that the general public sees Kaepernick as a martyr, a player who was wrongfully shut out of the league based on his First Amendment constitutional right to protest. Is the Kaepernick effect a big cause of the lost viewership? Probably not, but the negative image people have of the league still stands.

Adult life is hectic.

Since the beginning of this year, life has been especially busy for me. Whether it is planning for a wedding, working on work and school assignments, or just spending time on other projects you might be working on, I've been slammed.

I have realized more this year that time is the most important currency this life has to offer, and it needs to be used in the best way possible. In my mind, spending four hours on a team that I wasn't rooting for the entire year prior isn't the best use of my time.