Fact #2: The Super Bowl is the most perfectly engineered television event possible.

If you've ever tried to watch TV on the night of the Super Bowl, as if it's not the night of the Super Bowl, you can't really do it. Non-Super Bowl programming is all intentional counterprogramming, whether it was four straight years of Beavis and Butt-head 'Butt Bowls' in the 1990s or our modern society's advanced combo of the Puppy Bowl and the Lingerie Bowl.

It's the biggest television event of every year for a number of reasons: it's yearly so it's easy to plan around, it's promoted through every sports outlet for two weeks straight, there are lots of things that are kind of bullshit about it for you to cry "bullshit!" about, it's got a halftime show intended to draw in non-sports fans, and its ads are a highly touted event unto themselves that no American is supposed to miss.

Most importantly the Super Bowl has that "thing everyone is going to watch" momentum. Most of the broadcasts break the previous year's record as the most highly-watched program in US history, which means you need to watch the Super Bowl so you can be part of a larger cultural conversation, which means the game sets a new record every year by taking your uninterested eyeballs along with everyone else's.

And if you decide not to watch…well, OK, fine. Just be ready for other people to assume you think you're better than they are. Then they'll judge you for "judging them."

Yep, the Super Bowl's more than the most important sporting event and television experience in American culture…