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For professional football fans, this Sunday is Super Bowl XLVIII, the culmination of a tough season full of ups and downs and skittles and Omaha! and Richard Sherman telling people he's the best. For the rest of us, it means a party with gross salsa and watery beers at someone's apartment, and the joy of knowing that your Sunday TV schedule won't be disrupted by sports anymore.
If you're in that latter group, it's hard to care, or pretend to care, about the game so late in the season. Who should you be rooting for? How does this affect our (pop) culture at large? Which teams are even playing? Again, this isn't a guide for people who like/watch/or care about football. But if you're stuck watching the game this weekend, here's some non-sports related background information.
The Details
The Seattle Seahawks are playing the Denver Broncos at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing halftime. The game starts at 6:30 EST.
The Players
Since you're not picking out the roster for your Fantasy Football team, here are the ones you should know:
Richard Sherman - Seahawks
Sherman's brash postgame interview after the Seahawks beat the 49ers earlier this month led to a debate over why a black Stanford graduate is considered a thug for what amounts to yelling, when actually violent white men like Justin Bieber and Rob Ford are just guys being guys. It maybe, possibly, has something to do with race. "The only reason [being called a thug] bothers me is because it seems like it's the accepted way of calling someone the n-word nowadays," Sherman said. Sherman later appeared on Piers Morgan: