OK, my two cents.
Few layers to this, some easy, some a little trickier. As to whether this is worthy of a thread, since some seem to think it’s not. Of course it is—have you seen some of the threads on this board? Plenty to choose from. Many are dopey/trivial. But discussing your response to the NFL’s conduct during the whole deflategate fiasco? Easy call—definitely worthy of a thread.
Are your actions reasonable?
Well, they won’t make any “difference,” in the sense of the NFL noticing or caring, the numbers you tallied up aside. But as others have said, that’s hardly the point, or at most a secondary one—if enough people did this, it could have an impact, I suppose. But any individual watching/not watching, making NFL purchases, etc., is essentially irrelevant. The analogy I would draw is to voting. For the purpose of deciding an election, your vote doesn’t matter, or at least there’s an infinitesimal chance it will matter. But you vote because you do your part. Because (to you, if you vote) it’s the right thing to do.
So in that sense, it’s not an unreasonable reaction. It’s on principle. But will I join you? No. Two reasons.
I love sports, particularly pro football. But it is, at its core, a fundamentally trivial thing. It’s an entertainment to me, and so something I have difficulty mustering your kind of righteous indignation about.
But the key issue to me is more that the NFL’s behavior, as egregious as it’s been, simply doesn’t rise to the level of the kind of evil that to me would justify this response. To use a ridiculous example, if it turned out that Roger Goodell ordered each NFL team to sacrifice a newborn before each home game (actually, I could envision this), then I would not hunker down in front of the TV on Sunday and say, “damn, I hate those baby sacrifices, but I really gotta see what Garoppolo’s got.”
The league has acted abominably, but within the bounds of what I would expect from a group of corrupt, shabby bureaucrats. Embarrassing and infuriating, but such is life. I can’t imagine the list of what I would have to boycott if I used this standard on every commercial entity I come in contact with.
So it’s not for me, but what you’re doing isn’t crazy and is to me worthy of a (way too long
) response. Now if you were a friend of mine, I would probably (affectionately) berate you for taking this so seriously and urge you to lighten up. But I would, and do, tip my cap to your principles and commitment.