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The Super Bowl
Monday, 2005 February 7 - 9:01 pm
Not all of you are sports fans, I know. But I promise, only part of this article is actually about sports.

I'll get the sports section out of the way first. I just have two little comments.

First sports comment: Being a Michigan graduate, I'm awfully proud of the way Tom Brady has worked to become one of the most highly-regarded quarterbacks in the NFL. I think Michigan quarterbacks as a group are underrated. It has to mean something that almost all of Michigan's quarterbacks in the last two decades have played as a starter, at one time or another, for an NFL team. Few schools can say that.

Second sports comment: It amazed me that after all the Patriots' work, they almost gave the game away with one bad defensive play call. You're up by ten points and you don't drop a deep safety to help out your rookie cornerback against the fastest wide receiver on the opponent's team? Unbelievable. But you know, that's one of the interesting things about football for me: strategy and tactics play such an important part of the game. I find it much more cerebral than baseball or basketball, which are more about physical prowess and execution.

Okay, that's all the sports commentary for this article.

The halftime show was good, I think. Paul McCartney was the performer. This was one of the few times I was actually interested in watching the show, and that seemed to match the attitude of the crowd at the game too. It really struck me how timeless his music is... I mean, the songs he performed are forty years old, but the show he put on would compare favorably to any modern rock concert. My only worry is that the reason he was selected as the performer was because they knew he was safe. No wardrobe malfunctions, no booing (a la Ashlee Simpson), just kid-friendly and grandma-friendly music. The reason this worries me is because as a society, we seem to be drifting too much towards safe, conservative, blandness. I think we ought to be edgy, pushing the boundaries of our traditional thinking. I mean, I don't want exhibitionist grandstanding along the lines of what Janet Jackson did, but I also don't want us to turn into the United States of Kenny G.

As for the commercials, I thought that as a group they were pretty mediocre. The Anheuser-Busch commercials weren't as tasteless as they were last year, but they weren't terribly funny either. The GoDaddy.com commercial was shameless in its use of a buxom woman, but I enjoyed its in-your-face attitude towards the FCC. The McIlhenny Tabasco ad was also pretty shameless... but well, I have to say I enjoyed that one too.

The CareerBuilder.com ads, featuring a guy in a workplace full of monkeys, were pretty funny... it's something to which a lot of us can relate. And unlike the Ameriquest ads (which were very funny, I thought), the CareerBuilder.com ads actually had something to do with the product.

Some ads made no sense to me. Gladys Knight playing Rugby for MBNA? Whaaa? MC Hammer for Lays? Lebron James for Bubblicious? Gaah. Of course the worst ad was that ridiculous Napster ad, trying to tell us that renting our music for $15 a month was better than having an iPod. That ad ranked dead last in the USA Today study. Getting people to do math during the Super Bowl? Telling people to ditch their beloved iPods? Yeah, good luck with that.
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Posted by Ken in: commentary

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