Not everybody sat in front of their televisions Sunday, bloating themselves with pizza and beer as the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts duked it out.
Call it the anti-Super Bowl movement. But plenty of folks like Nick Miller of Visalia were not among the 80-or-so million viewers expected to tune in to the football game and the $2.6million commercials.
"Super Bowl is goofy," said Miller, a Redwood High School student activities director. "It's really just a long list of commercials interrupted by a football game. I don't even know who's playing."
He admits it's probably "very un-American" to not like the Super Bowl, but he hasn't watched any of the other football games this season. So he asks: Why watch football now?
In previous years, Miller and his family have taken full advantage of the near-empty roadways and headed to Fresno to eat in near-empty restaurants and shop in near-empty malls.
This year, they took a trip to Disneyland.
"The longest we waited in line for a ride was 15 or 20 minutes," he said by cell phone Sunday. "It's busy, but oh my God, nothing like during the summer."
The owner of an all-female yoga studio in northeast Fresno held a Sunday class for women not interested in the big game. She called it the "Football Widows" class.
"We just knew, now that we own a female yoga studio, that there are a lot of women who absolutely hate football," said Chasmar "Chaz" Russ, who owns Sisters Yoga with her husband, Trent.
Five women showed up for the class, which began 25 minutes before kickoff between the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears in Miami.
Marisa Horton, a 28-year-old graphic designer from Fresno, is a regular at the yoga studio. She used to like football — the Philadelphia Eagles specifically — but that went sour when temperamental receiver Terrell Owens blew through town.
"After they got all crazy with Terrell, I kind of lost interest," Horton said after the yoga class.
Horton said her boyfriend went to a friend's house to watch the game and didn't mind that she made herself scarce.
"He didn't care either way, but I didn't really give him the option," Horton said. "I just told him, 'What are you doing on Sunday, because I need to be here at 3 o'clock?"
Another "football widow," Jenna Lange of Fresno, says she isn't a football fan, either.
"No, I really don't know anything about sports," Lange, 21, admits.
So it wasn't a hard decision to chose yoga over football.
"It was either this or I don't know what — watch the Super Bowl and be uninterested, I suppose," said Lange, who works at a Fresno glass company.
There are plenty of others whose weekend plans did not include the Super Bowl.
Wearing a bicycle helmet, Ed Parker, 49, socialized with another man at the Starbucks in the Tower District. He stopped by the coffeehouse after going for a bicycle ride.
"Today was an awesome day for a ride," Parker said. "There were no cars out there."
Parker says he used to like football, but no longer. He doesn't like the violence. He doesn't like the metaphors used to compare football to war. And he's turned off by the massive amount of advertising associated with the Super Bowl.
"The whole sports thing, I just think it leads to aggression too much," Parker said on the Starbucks outdoor patio.
Alan Spires is partial to the San Francisco 49ers. But he didn't care about either team in Sunday's game.
So he and his wife, Ligaya, took their three dogs — Kia, Angel and Bambi — to Visalia's dog park, Cody Kelly Bark Park.
"The only thing I'm going to do is check my football pool at the end of the game to see if I won any money," Spires said.
The reporters can be reached at svang@fresnobee.com or (559) 622-2409 or at teberly@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6465.
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