Close to 150 million people tune in every year to watch at least part of football's championship game. Compare that with the approximately 15 million who tune in to your average World Series game—the difference is pretty stark, and certainly not reflective of the fan base of the respective sports.
The reason? A single winner-take-all game is much more exciting and important than a seven-game series. No one game of the series that determine the basketball, baseball or hockey champion is as consequential as the Super Bowl. So your team lost one? No reason to panic, tomorrow will be another game...
The Super Bowl is also more interesting because anything can happen in a single game. This gives the weaker team a better chance of winning; the outcome is less predictable.
So where am I going with all this?
Every day we have different struggles; we're always facing one sort of contest or another. How important is it to be victorious? So you want that piece of non-kosher cake, you want to skip that prayer, or you want take a pass on doing that favor for your friend... Is it a big deal? Tomorrow you'll get it right!
I guess it depends whether you view each struggle as part of a series, or a Super Bowl.
And if you're in Super Bowl mode, you get another advantage: in any one game, anything can happen. You can win even if you think you might be outmatched in this particular area.
