OK, so it wasn’t nearly as much of a blowout as I was expecting. The Patriots’ defense certainly did what was expected of them, save that long drive in the third quarter. The surprise for me was how effective the Eagles’ defense was at shutting down the Patriots’ offense. Actually, if you like well-played defensive football, it was a pretty good game.
I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in the commentary; I’ve come to expect consistantly mediocre commentary from Buck, Aikman, and Collinswoth over the years but they really underdid themselves during this game. I mean, given the fact that was clearly a smash-mouth, defensive football game, you’d think that the commentators would actually, you know, talk about the defenses. Plus, not every third-down conversion is “critical,” nor are they all “turning points in the game”. Get a grip, guys.
Ads: The Burt Reynolds/Dancing Bear ad was my favorite, followed by the GoDaddy.com bimbo-at-the-congressional-hearing ad (redeemed mostly by a 3-second shot of an octogenarian sucking heavily on an oxygen mask). The Mustang convertible is a car I want. And Honda’s new pickup looks like the designers played a little too much with their Tonka trucks when they were kids. It is, however, a very large vehicle, no matter what it looks like. Wonder if they make them in Tonka yellow.
Here are the survey results on this year's favorite superbowl commercials from the ESPN site. Note that the Kinkos/FedEx ad with Burt Reynolds was not one of the choices.
19.4% Ameriquest - Killed the cat?
18.4% Bud Light - Pilot jumps out of airplane for beer
13.7% Anheuser-Busch - ''Thank You'' to those serving in military
13.0% Godaddy.com - Attractive woman testifies in front of Congress
8.9% Careerbuilder.com - Monkees in the office
8.0% Ameriquest - ''You're getting robbed.''
6.8% NFL Network - NFL stars singing ''Tomorrow"
6.1% Diet Pepsi - P.Diddy turns Pepsi truck into hot commodity
5.6% Lays - MC Hammer over the fence
The fact that the Bud Light parachuting ad was the second most popular suggests to me that the United States is in an irreversible decline. The fact that the Anheuser-Busch - ''Thank You'' ad came in third might just prove it.
There were a fair number of well-executed advertisement and funny ones, just an utter deficit of really memorable 'Super Bowl' ads.
The killed the cat ad was certainly funny, but it just didn't strike me as being the kind of 'event' one-off that the great Super Bowl ads of the past have been.