Super Bowl Wrapup II

Okay, time now to continue my annual tradition of recapping the Super Bowl.

The Game:

The NEW YORK GIANTS are your Super Bowl XLII Champions! Who could have predicted it? Oh wait, I did, a week and a half ago.

In all fairness, it's easy to pick an underdog; if they lose, you get credit for making such a bold prediction and if they win, you look like a genius. And it was sort of a soft prediction. Nevertheless, I put it out there.

Since it seems like it will still be a long time before my long-suffering Jets make the big dance, I will have to live vicariously through their sister team. I will definitely enjoy the blemish on Belicheck's perfect season. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Congratulations 1972 Miami Dolphins.

Objectively, I think any football fan can be happy that we had a great game where each team had their destiny in their own hands down to the final minute of play. Everyone wants a great game (except perhaps Patriot fans, who would have been completely intolerable had Brady pulled out a last second miracle) and we got one.

Oh. And the commercials. Every year, the cry goes out that the commercials aren't what they used to be. Don't believe me? Click here. And every year I insist that they were NEVER what they used to be. I think we always got one or two good ads, which lingered in our memory as a spate of great Super Bowl commercials. The commercials haven't changed, WE'VE changed. If we could have hopped online in 1970 or 80 or 90 to dissect every commercial that appeared, as we can today, I wonder if we would ever have learned to romanticize Super Bowl ads. Furthermore, in the last decade, there has been a quantum leap in the level of ingenuity required by advertisers looking to attract clients online, and the tools they have at hand to entertain, surprise and amuse viewers thanks to technology. Traditional T.V. commercials really don't stand that much of a chance.

In sum, we had an exciting season, a great final game, some cool commercials (Alex Rocco reprising his Godfather "Horse head" scene with a car grill), some lame ones (a baby buying stocks on eTrade, Coke bringing Republicans and Democrats together, these are just tired retreads as far as I'm concerned...besides the only kind of coke that brings Republicans and Democrats together doesn't come in soda bottles) and a bunch in between. Next up, Super Tuesday, a contest whose outcome is actually of genuine importance.