You can’t skip the Super Bowl. How would you know what junk to buy this year?

How could you even consider missing a Super Bowl, though it’s an exhausting thing to endure for four hours?

Why, it’s almost as long as the last minute of a close college basketball game.

You have to watch the Super Bowl or you won’t know what the world is talking about for most of Monday. Still, the barrage of new commercials with celebrities flying at you left and right can wear you out.

I’d ask if people are actually influenced to buy the stuff that’s being presented in all those weird and wild ways, but clearly they do. There’s one born every minute.

If there were a 30-second commercial that was nothing but quiet contemplation, I’d buy the product even if were something I don’t need, like what’s pushed in 95 percent of those ads.

The yucking it up from Terry and Howie and Jimmy and the other TV panelists discussing the game beforehand can beat you down worse than any defensive end. This may be 95 percent wrong, but aren’t 95 percent of the people who watch this particular game unconcerned with inside-football stuff?

Who watches the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to listen to a chalk talk about helium?

Speaking of chalk, fingernails on a chalkboard is the color commentator for this year’s game. It’s Tom Brady. Giving Talkative Tom two thumbs down this evening will be a national pastime we will share with people from all walks of life.

Everything in the first half and second half takes a backseat to the halftime show. The best moments of every football season occur during halftime of the Super Bowl. That’s when people of certain backgrounds and ages come together for a common cause: Complaining about the musical act.

Oh, it’s been a hoot to hear the gripes from viewers who were unfamiliar with recent halftime performers like The Weeknd or Usher, and didn’t enjoy their performances.

You may have heard it asked why isn’t there a country music act once in a while. There’s just one problem. Namely, it’s country music. The world, by and large, isn’t a fan.

Kendrick Lamar is this year’s halftime act. He won a pile of Grammys last Sunday. He’ll do a great show, and it will be judged as such by millions. It also will be deemed unlistenable by millions of others, especially Granddad. Then the game will resume.

Ah, the game. It’s the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs are quarterbacked by someone who was on the losing side of a 66-10 score against Iowa State in 2016.

Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes passed for 219 yards in that game and was intercepted twice. Into every life a little rain must fall, eh?

I hope the Eagles win because Philadelphia is the birthplace of democracy. More, though, because the city has an edge to it.

Kansas City was where Walt Disney lived as a boy. Had Disney grown up in Philly, Mickey Mouse and his other creations would have been gritty, even rough. Disneyland and Disney World would have been hardscrabble places that no one with money would have patronized, and maybe parents would have taken their families to national parks instead.

Most importantly, kids wouldn’t have grown up so soft. Am I right, Granddad?

A lot of people say they’re tired of seeing Taylor Swift at Chiefs games, which seems odd. She’s on TV for only a few seconds at a time. As opposed to replay officials, who are on camera long enough to star in their own mini-series.

What’s really tiresome is the team’s owner being the first person to accept the championship trophy from whichever television creature is handing it over. The billionaire then spews some pandering nonsense about how the team won it for the fans and the city.

Before the winner is crowned, though, we’ll lock into the halftime show. Some think Future will join Kendrick Lamar on stage, others say it will be Metro Boomin, some say Lil’ Wayne, and others are predicting Baby Keem.

Let’s hope it’s all of the above, because you love them. Let’s also hope the Eagles’ Saquon Barkley has 28 carries for 211 yards, and let’s hope for four hours we all forget about whatever it is we’d like to forget.

And please, no wagering. It tends to spoil the purity of a sporting competition.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com