Pigskin over politics?
The American public, in 2008, was more interested in its favorite pastime rather than the starting stages of picking the next individual to run our country.
About 97.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the New York Giants mark the only blemish to the New England Patriots’ path to perfection, by defeating them 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII.
Another impressive statistic is that this year’s Super Bowl was the most watched Super Bowl of all-time, beating out the previous record of 94.08 million set by the Pittsburgh defeat at the hands of Dallas in 1996, according to the Associated Press online.
A mere 2.8 million tuned into CNN on June 3 for the first presidential debate of 2008.
Though the debate became the second most watched debate on a cable channel, those numbers aren’t anywhere close to the ballpark for the Super Bowl’s numbers.
This raises the question: does America care more about football than the growth of its nation?
Statistically speaking, it’s an evident landslide.
Granted, there are over 303 million people in the United States.
But, this also means that almost one-third of the U.S. population tuned in to view the Super Bowl, while less than one percent tuned in for the debate.
Honestly, the worst part of it all is the Super Bowl happens every year.
Picking our president only happens every four years.
Wouldn’t you think something that didn’t occur as often, and that fills the most vital position in our country, would take top honors over a football game?
As you can tell, the statistics speak otherwise.
Maybe it’s because the population of America is unaware of how to find such information on the Democratic and Republican candidates.
YouTube.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Google. com, etc. have loads of information to get clued in, even for that person not really into politics.
Or could it be that most of America doesn’t really care? It’s a possibility.
On the other hand, Americans reallyseem to get into the presidential run when it comes time to vote. Then they flood the polls in hopes that their favorite will win.
We will just have to wait and see how many will participate in the voting.
Until then, the numbers, so far, prove the Super Bowl is the front-runner in this competition.
—Stephen Sossamon
Staff Writer
