A lot of people watch the Super Bowl every year.

You know that. Last year about 111 million people watched. The game three years ago became the most-viewed ever, with 114 million people watching.

But football ratings overall have dropped in the past couple years. Numbers for the 2017 season were down 9.7 percent, continuing a decline from the year before.

To be clear, the audience for football is still enormous and dwarfs almost everything else on TV.

Football is still dominating, but just a little bit less so.

There are a lot of theories about why the decline is happening — including the distraction of the 2016 presidential campaign and President Trump’s disparaging tweets, games being too long to keep the attention of younger viewers, or a lack of star players on the field.

We asked Weekend Edition listeners to tell us about why they stopped watching recently.

Stephanie Norman from Kansas City, Kan., says she was turned off by NFL players “taking a knee” during the national anthem in recent months to protest police brutality and to protest the president.

“I don’t really care to support it,” she tells NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

“I think to incite a political climate in your stadiums when we’re there to be entertained is just inappropriate.”

Norman says the NFL needs to be clear about exactly why the national anthem is played at games.

“I think if you’re playing it to salute the troops, it’s the wrong time to be … grandstanding basically,” she says.

“My grandfather died during World War II. I saw the pain and suffering that inflicted upon my family. It’s the least we could do, just one time, to celebrate American victory and our heroes.

“Use your social media, use your voice, get a protest going another time. March on D.C. Wear a color of tie to the NFL banquet — I don’t care what you do. But I think the NFL needs to make a stand and say why they’re playing it, what they expect their players to do, and if you’re getting paid to do your job, do your job.”

Rodrigo Vijalva of Fort Wright, Ky., doesn’t think the players are grandstanding, so much as using their star status to call attention to something.

“They’re in a position where they are more heard than the people that they’re fighting for,” he says. “It’s a lot easier if you’re a professional player to get attention to an issue” than what “the average person on the street” is able to do.

Fred McFarland of Pensacola, Fla. says he actually started watching football after a long hiatus — to support the protesters.

“Being a veteran, the fact that these gentlemen were using the rights that I defended gave me a reason to support them and start watching football again,” he says.

“I understand their viewpoint. They have a right to say how they feel under the First Amendment, just like Colin Kaepernick has the right to take a knee when he’s at a game.”

He says that when people thank him for his service, he tells them to “use your rights, get involved in local government, register to vote, make sure you vote,” because “those are the thank yous that I personally want.”

McFarland says he wants to show support because those players are “doing exactly what I’ve asked others to do” on “their stage.” Plus, he’s “not a guy that’s going to buy a jersey or anything like that.”

Another factor listeners talked about: worries about injuries and brain damage in players.

Researchers have long been studying a possible link between the type of hits to the head that football players receive and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

“I feel like I can’t watch football with a clean conscience,” listener Obie Pressman tells NPR.

Rodrigo Vijalva says he used to watch and enjoy “a nice hit, a good block or a good tackle.” But after hearing about the possible brain damage those head hits could be causing, “as opposed to enjoying it, I would just find myself thinking: Well, I hope the guy gets up.”

He has an 8-year-old daughter and a 16-month-old son now.

“I’m definitely concerned about my son maybe wanting to grow up and play, with football being so prevalent in culture, in schools,” he says. “Personally, I would not want him to play, so it seems hypocritical to be watching it with him and then kind of glorifying these things.”

Vijalva is also worried about players getting in “legal trouble” for things like physically abusing their partners or drunk driving, “and then teams kind of turning a blind eye if the player was good enough.”

Listener Annie Callahan told NPR, “After it came out about abuse of their spouses or girlfriends, I actually refuse to watch the NFL anymore because I really don’t think they take the safety of women seriously.”

In 2014, a video surfaced showing Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancee Janay Palmer. Other incidents involving domestic violence and NFL players have made the news since then.

“Domestic violence and the NFL have been unhappily coupled more than a few times in recent years,” NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates explained in 2016.

Despite their reservations, Vijalva and McFarland say they’re watching the game at home Sunday night.

As for Norman? “I was for the Vikings, so I’m out of it at this point,” she says. “But Tom Brady has had an amazing career and he’s done remarkable things. And I can only hope that he continues to break records.”

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All eyes will be on the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday as the teams face off in Super Bowl LII. Who will win the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy this year, the perennial favorite or the underdog? You can spend hours analyzing statistics, or you could trust the intuition of animals that don’t understand football. As a reference, the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had the Patriots as 4-point favorites on Friday.

This might not be the most scientific approach, but it’s undoubtedly the most adorable. Here are the results:

Bubbles, the elephant: Eagles

At the Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, Bubbles, a 9,000-pound African elephant, flipped over the Eagles helmet with her trunk and devoured the apple underneath.

Fiona, the hippo: Eagles

Cincinnati Zoo’s celebrity hippopotamus, Fiona, ate her greens out of the Eagles box. Underdogs have to stick together, after all.

Nicholas, the dolphin: Patriots

When given the choice between a Patriots and Eagles football, Nicholas the rescued dolphin at Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida guided the Patriots football toward the “dolphin football judge.” This psychic dolphin is six for seven in sports predictions, including a correct selection last year for the reigning Super Bowl champions Patriots. The Eagles have reason to fear.

Fernando, the sloth: Eagles

Phoenix Zoo’s sloth, Fernando, made a decisive pick in favor of the Eagles by slowly climbing toward Philadelphia’s container. It’s always a delight watching sloths eat flowers, but this video set to a sultry soundtrack is a true gem.

April, the giraffe: Patriots

The Patriots are going to get its third Super Bowl title in four years, according to April, Animal Adventure Park’s celebrity giraffe. April gained worldwide fame in 2017 when the late stages of her pregnancy and eventual delivery were streamed live on YouTube.

Le Le, the panda: Eagles

Le Le, a giant panda at the Memphis Zoo, declared Philadelphia to be the Super Bowl LII champions by pulling down the Eagles banner first. At just 1-3 in Super Bowl predictions, though, Le Le is more cute than accurate.

Jimmy Fallon’s puppies: Patriots

In the 2018 installment of this fan-favorite segment, more of Jimmy Fallon’s 11-panel of puppies ate from the Patriots bowl than the Eagles bowl. The real MVP, though, is the puppy that refused to participate at 1:39.

Ahren, the eagle: Eagles

Ahren the eagle, a resident of Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, swooped down from a perch and looked briefly at the stuffed bear donning Patriots gear before picking her stuffed counterpart. Of course, this surprised no one. Even Ahren’s handler admitted: “She might be a bit biased.”

Linda Wang is an intern on the National Desk.

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Philadelphia Eagles fans are considered some of the most passionate and loyal in the NFL. They’re also regarded as some of the league’s worst.

They’re so unruly city workers tried — and failed — to discourage Birds fans from climbing street poles after the NFC title game by slathering them in Crisco.

They’re so wild that police arrested a fan for allegedly punching a state police horse in the face before kickoff that day.

“Eagles fans kind of take it a step further than most other fanbases,” says Mark Liftin, a lifelong New York Giants fan. “They kind of wear their reputation as being a little psychotic as a badge of honor.”

Eagles fans, naturally, disagree with that assessment. They say the overwhelming majority of people behave themselves, and that it’s a few bad apples that spoil the bunch.

The “knuckleheads,” as sports radio host Glen Macnow calls them.

“Eagles fans are loyal, hardworking, long-suffering, terrifically dedicated, ardent fans, who unfortunately get lumped in with the one-half of 1 percent who are in fact Visigoths,” Macnow says.

To die-hard fan Michelle Mockus, the bad reputation persists for a simple reason: It’s clickbait for national media outlets.

“It’s Daily Mail-level juicy,” says Mockus. “People love to see these kinds of things. They want to feel bad about Philly.”

Eagles fans are also haunted by history.

In 1968, the team wrapped up a miserable, two-win season with a home loss against the Minnesota Vikings. The team planned a Christmas pageant for halftime, but when the professional Santa Claus they hired didn’t show up, they pressed into service a skinny, slightly drunk fan already dressed the part.

It didn’t go over well. The crowd, already upset about the game and the season, pelted the psuedo-Santa with snowballs.

Three decades later, the Eagles installed a courtroom in the basement of the team’s old stadium, where an on-duty city judge handed out fines for disorderly conduct.

Seamus McCaffery, who presided over the stadium courtroom, says a lot of the incidents were soaked in alcohol.

“It went from anything to urinating in the sinks, for example, in the bathrooms. It went to urinating on the sidewalls. It went to rowdy, abusive behavior to the point where police were intervening just before blows occurred,” McCaffery says.

Despite all that, he still thinks Eagles fans are unfairly maligned: “I’m hard-pressed to believe that other stadiums don’t make their fair share of arrests for public intoxication, things along those lines.”

He’s not wrong. In 2011, three fans were hospitalized after violence at a San Francisco 49ers game; New York Jets fans have made a halftime ritual out of asking women to flash them.

But Philadelphians are still routinely singled out, and not just the Eagles fans. Fans of the city’s hockey, baseball and basketball teams are considered just as notorious.

It’s why Liftin, the New York Giants fan, won’t even consider going to an Eagles home game with his friends from Philadelphia.

“I’d be lucky to make it out with the jersey on my back,” Liftin says.

The White Plains, N.Y., resident has previous firsthand experience with rowdy Philadelphia sports fans. At a baseball game years ago, Liftin said Phillies fans spit at him for wearing a New York Mets hat. A teenager slapped him.

Macnow, the radio host, doesn’t condone that kind of behavior. It does bother him that Philly fans, especially Eagles fans, are given such a hard time, but he says he’s come to terms with it.

“Our grandfathers carried this, our fathers carried this curse, we’re gonna carry it, and I expect my kids are gonna carry it forever,” Macnow says. “It’s just the way it’s gonna be.”

Macnow and other fans may find that easier to take if the Eagles win their first Super Bowl on Sunday.

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The brand new Olympic stadium in Pyeongchang, South Korea, will be used just four times before it’s decommissioned after the Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The venue will be used for opening and closing ceremonies for two Olympics and then it will be demolished.

The $109 million stadium is raising questions about whether hosting the Olympics is worth the cost for cities that don’t have existing infrastructure to accommodate the event. The Pyeongchang stadium is one of several new arenas, event spaces and lodging structures built for the Olympics, which could cost South Korea nearly $13 billion.

Despite bold plans to repurpose Olympic buildings, past host cities, such as Rio de Janeiro and Athens, have been left with vacant, decaying sports complexes. Organizers in South Korea are planning to demolish some of the new buildings after the games, rather than risk them becoming white elephants, says Judith Grant-Long, an associate professor of sport management at the University of Michigan and a co-director of the Michigan Center for Sport and Policy.

“It’s not so unusual to see temporary facilities used in the context of the Olympics, but this moves the needle towards disposable facilities,” she tells Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd. “And I think the cost of this particular venue at approximately $100 million is really making people sit up and take notice about the costs associated with building venues.”

The region’s modest population is one reason why repurposing the stadium doesn’t make much economic sense. There are only about 40,000 people in Pyeongchang County, which makes it almost impossible to regularly fill the new stadium that seats 35,000.

South Korean officials are hoping the Olympics will boost the area’s population by creating a new tourism cluster, Grant-Long says. Olympic organizers in Sochi, Russia, had similar goals, but unlike Russians, South Koreans don’t care much for winter sports. A survey taken last April by the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism found that only 35.6 percent of people were interested in the Winter Olympics.

“The other issue with the success of this particular strategy in that location is that South Koreans at this point in time are not particularly a winter sport people,” Grant-Long says. “So the idea of creating a tourism strategy that’s based on winter sports, skiing and so forth, has not necessarily been a well-received idea from an economic development point of view.”

Financial problems after the Olympics and other international sports events are common. It took Montreal 30 years to pay off its debts after the 1976 Olympics. The city’s Olympic stadium was recently transformed into a refugee welcome center for asylum seekers entering Canada from the U.S.

Athens spent more than $15 billion to stage the Summer Games in 2004, adding to the country’s debt and sparking the current economic turmoil. The games did bring much-needed development to the metro system, highways and an airport, but graffiti-covered stadiums remain unused.

In Rio, organizers are still staring down $40 million in debt incurred during the 2016 summer games after ambitious plans to convert arenas into schools collapsed. And the $550 million World Cup stadium in Brasilia, Brazil, was turned into a bus parking lot after the 2015 soccer tournament.

“Most countries end up with a lot of debt, a lot of white elephants, and quite a bit of infrastructure investment that is not ideal for the type of development needs that the city has,” Andy Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., told NPR in 2014.

Experts say most cities that decide to host the Olympics will confront mountains of debt, especially if they don’t have the infrastructure already. Construction companies often drive city officials to make higher bids by presenting more elaborate plans.

“If you’re going to organize the games, you have to be prepared for financial surprises – I’ll put it politely – and debt,” Olympic historian David Wallechinsky told NPR last year. “But it can be done, and it has been done. The London Games didn’t lose money. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics made a profit, and in fact, that profit has been put to wonderful use.”

The 1984 Games generated a $225-million surplus, which has been used to support American Olympic efforts and local youth sports organiztions over the past three decades, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At the end of last year, Paris and Los Angeles were chosen to host the Olympic Games in 2024 and 2028. The International Olympic Committee says the cities were designated because of their plans to use a “record-breaking number of existing and temporary facilities.”

Grant-Long says choosing those cities is part of the IOC’s goal “to figure out what is a sustainable path forward, and it’s either a single site, a set of permanent sites, or really recalibrating the games around a much more modest idea.”

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