At the risk of repeating myself, the Super Bowl is Sunday and I won’t watch it.

I haven’t watched one since 1995, and I won’t break my streak this year.

My decision surprises some people who know of my love for college football and the Canadian Football League.

I remember watching the first and second Super Bowls. At the time, when there were only three television networks and cable and satellite television services were something no one heard of, there were two professional football leagues, and the match-ups were interesting and fun. The interest was centered around whether the teams of the young American Football League with its mix of college players and “has-been” NFL stars could compete with the established NFL.

So how did I lose interest?

The answer is very simple. The leagues merged. Like the fall of the Soviet Union caused the end of the classic spy novel, the merger of the AFL and NFL killed pro football. Everybody pretty much played everybody else. There was no mystery, no anticipation whether one team from the other league would defeat a team from the rival league.

And there was another aspect. The other reason I stopped watching the Super Bowl was because I got tired of the hype and tired of seeing all those prima donnas prancing and showing off on the field. It just stopped appealing to me. I want to watch somebody score a touchdown and act like they’ve been there before, ala Barry Sanders. Just cross the goal line, flip the ball to the referee and go to the bench. It’s the same thing with defensive plays. I don’t mind a little celebration for making a good play, but the dancing and antics after the play don’t really impress me.

I miss the days of the Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s. I miss watching players like Jim Brown, Jimmy Taylor, Paul Hornung, Johnny Unitas, Walter Peyton, Carl Eller and the Purple People Eaters of the Minnesota Vikings, Willie Davis and Y.A. Tittle, who recently passed away.

These were men. They were professionals. They approached the game with respect and an attitude. I miss those days.

In many ways, I’ve seen the same thing happen in baseball which allows teams from the American and National leagues to play each other.

When I was growing up, the AL and the NL were as different as night and day. They had different profiles, different characteristics and different philosophies. They had their own fan bases. They might play each other in exhibition games, but from the start of the season until the first pitch of the World Series, AL teams didn’t face NL teams.

Now, it’s hard to give your heart to a league. You just support a team.

I guess it was inevitable that one day the football and baseball leagues would eventually have mergers.

It’s all about change in the end, but sports league mergers are something I’ll never get used to.

John Surratt is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com