That’s not a headline I thought I’d be writing today but, you know, whatever. In the grand tradition of the last third of your poorly-produced local newscast (you know, the one where the guy wearing six bottles of hair product tells you that the water you’re drinking is poison), Time Magazine is here to tell us that the Super Bowl could kill you:
It turns out that passionately following a team to a climactic event like the Super Bowl championship may be stressful enough to trigger heart attack or heart disease. In a study of Los Angeles county residents, before and after the L.A. teams’ two Super Bowl appearances, researchers found that a win correlated with a decrease in heart-related deaths while a loss was linked to a spike in cardiac deaths in the weeks following the game.
Good thing L.A. doesn’t have an NFL team anymore, then! Of course, its residents are still vulnerable to heart problems brought on by sex or waiting in traffic or stress at work or … well, lots of things that we accept as parts of modern life. So it seems strange to worry about this too much. If things go wrong for the Steelers, though, we’d all do well to remember that it’s just a game.