You should go ahead and have the family gathering, without football. My husband quit watching NFL games when they were recruiting criminals, and the knee thing started. We had a Superbowl party last year without the game. Was a lot of fun!
We boycotted the former niners when the Colon took a knee during the National Anthem. In short time that was a boycott of all NFL games due to their lack of cleanup in aisle 69 from the Colon.
This June we cut our Comcast cable and cost ESPN/NFL/Disney a lot of money.
Recently, I cancelled our Sling Orange and Blue and went to Sling Blue as our streaming provider with our internet.
Sling Blue does not carry ESPN nor Disney. So ESP/NFL/Disney has lost any income from us.
Besides saving well over a hundred $’s per month, there is another big benefit as you noted.
My wife and I are spending more good quality time together, and my long honey do list is getting shorter each weekend.
When friends and relatives visit on Sunday afternoon, we talk instead of watching the NFL thugs do their stuff.
Yesterday, our youngest Adult Child visited and prepared an anniversary dinner for us. I told him there were no NFL channels, and he said good.
We enjoyed about 5 hours without the thugs. As he was leaving, he asked me to send a list of things he needed to do to cut his cable and drop the NFL.