Well another Superbowl has passed. Forty of them…

The first thing to note is that Superbowl Sunday is quickly becoming “Ken’s obligitory annual beer day”. For some reason I just don’t drink very much at all and it isn’t because of any religious aversion. When offered a beer or a soda most of the time my mouth desires a soda. In any case, I’ve made a point of ensuring a drink a beer on Superbowl Sunday just to make sure I drink a beer now and again. Kinda odd…

Along those lines, Wendy said something that every man wants to hear now and again from his wife: “Can I get you another beer?” Admittedly, she isn’t exactly given a lot of oportunities to say that, particularly the “another” part.

Also, I realized how much I miss watching the Superbowl with my Dad. Every year I’d get to hear my Dad lose his cool because someone was talking during a commercial. The best part was that he’d rewind the segment to hear it again and inevitably everyone would be quiet just long enough for him to rewind, re-watch the part he heard the first time, and then someone would say something just as he was trying to hear it the 2nd time. The resulting fracas was always fun to watch. I’ll have to make sure I watch the game with him next year.

On to this years commercials:

This year started with a pretty good batch. I particularly like the following (in order):

1. Bud’s secret fridge and the rotating wall.
2. FedEx’s pre-historic manager “that’s not my problem”
3. Bud’s running from the bear.
4. Bud’s “cleaning the gutters”
5. AmeriQuest’s “that killed him” bit (the fly by the doctor) even though I didn’t like the “Don’t judge too quickly” series as a whole.
6. CareerBuilder’s Chimps running company think sales are up because they’ve got the chart sideways.

But as the day wore on, not only did the commercials get worse, but I saw A LOT of already running ads, particularly from Carls Jr. What every happened to every ad on the superbowl being new?

Next up, the halftime show:

This just gets worse EVERY year. This year we just have a standard run of the mill Rolling Stones concert. What’s special/super about that? I mean it was fine, for a Rolling Stones concert. But who cares? If I wanted to see the Rolling Stones I’d order up whatever pay-per-view thing they’re doing right now. At least last year with Paul McCartney they had a pretty cool fireworks display synchronized to the music. That was somewhat unique. But the Rolling Stones doing they’re regular thing just isn’t special. In the end, the whole concert halftime show is the wrong way to go. I’d rather see the traditional marching bands or similar stuff. I want to see something unique even at the expense of “guaranteed” enjoyability. It doesn’t make any sense to do a rock concert. That’ll just never be special or unique. Add on the pre-game concert by Stevy Wonder and you’ve got a bad joke on your hands. Something really needs to be done about this.

Finally, the game itself:

Every Seattle fan this morning needs to shutup about the refs. It wasn’t that bad and you probably would have lost anyway. There’s actually a petition circulating this morning asking for the NFL to add “reviews” to penalties.

Listen people, that’s THE ABSOLUTE LAST thing that the NFL needs. I already don’t like the reviews and you can’t have reviews of judgement calls by the refs. See, the underlying problem is that every play has 10 fouls if you go just by the rule book. By the letter of the law tons of rules get broken. The refs therefore reasonably have to make judgement calls as to what was a big enough infraction to justify calling the penalty. Often times they are using their knowledge of the minor infractions that weren’t called before that to decide whether to call a penalty now. So, in the case of the offensive pass interference call that overturned a touchdown (which admittedly was the most objectional call) for all we know he’d been pushing off the defender all day and that was the straw that broke the camels back. But that doesn’t change the fact that the player did indeed break a rule even though he didn’t break the “spirit” of the rule.

I also think the replay of the TD was handled correctly. There wasn’t enough evidence to OVERTURN the call. People forget that the ref’s job is not to determine what was most likely the case but to determine if there is solid evidence that the call on the field was wrong. This didn’t exist for two reasons:

1. the ball was hidden behind the QB’s arm
2. the camera that had the best angle wasn’t on the line but in the endzone (I’d say 4-5 yards deep) and that slight angle change is more significant than you think in making the location of the line difficult to judge.

Which brings me to an on-going complaint I have about football TV coverage (both college and pro). Why is it that the sideline cameral is always out of position? Seriously, on a play like that the camera should be RIGHT ON the endzone line! Why is it always slightly off. At least if it had been right on the line of scrimage (another thing they frequenly fail to properly place it on) they’d have an excuse, but no, it’s 4 yards deep in the endzone. And this is the case just about EVERY time. They NEVER put it right on the line even when it is clear that they set it up for the line shot. Just ridiculous.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.