Watching the game is not a problem but obsessing about sports is.
:tv-disturbed:
The biggest issue is, perhaps, the commercials and the half-time events. These are created to attract and inflame the passions of lust, avarice, gluttony, mostly, and a few other deadly sins. (That's just the facts, Jack.)
We know enough about these famous commerical time slots and the further scandalous half-time entertainment that it is actually a
sin to watch them. The argument, "Well, I know myself, therefore, it isn't a near-occasion of sin for me" is ignorant of the fact that they are just silly lambs going to spiritual slaughter. If you were really such a perfect saint, you would be totally disgusted in the existence of such perversity, and want to avoid it all costs. What one is really saying when they make this 'argument', "I really am not worried about getting into Heaven (translation: I'm shootin' for Purgatory)." Or they are saying, "I'm not really worried about the state of my soul, or growing in Christ, I'm happy just where I am without committing mortal sin." :ape: This is a sin of presumption. Why is this dangerous? Because such complacency is simply not properly discerning the state of their soul. In other words, these people don't even consider their thoughts, words and deeds in respect to what is offensive to God, but rather by what the world deems as acceptable. (Guess then who is their 'god'? Hint: It's no longer Christ.)
According to the Doctors of the Church, those who love Christ have an
obligation to avoid the unncessary near occasions of sin. A guy looks at a scantily dressed woman and thinks the wrong thing that instant he's commited sin. And those ads during half time don't just cause murder and sickness to the state of souls in Sanctifying grace (and cause greater evils to the people already in mortal sin), but they also induce people, men and women, into lukewarmness. This is why we get people who defend the culture of television have an already deadened conscience.