Stupor Bowl

Well we've moved past another hash mark in 2007 America, as the two-week sports-and-marketing frenzy called Super Bowl Hype culminated in the usual anti-climactic football contest. To no one's particular suprise, the superior team (the annual AFC entrant) bested a game but overmatched NFL rival. There was a little more intrigue this year because the two franchises were vintage teams that existed when there were only twelve teams in the entire NFL, and the AFL was still a glint in Lamar Hunt's imagination.

Indianapolis thus gets its first Super Bowl trophy, although the Colts franchise had appeared in two memorable early Super Bowls. Peyton Manning gets the monkey off his back as the "great talent never to win the big one" (hopefully Arod will be next, but I'm not holding my breath). Stalwart Chicago fans got their money's worth from the Bears excellent season. Rex Grossman now has to live down a reputation as a lousy QB (not helped by the headline from The Onion which read "Bears Lead Grossman to the Super Bowl"). Tony Romo, who literally singlehandedly lost a playoff game for Dallas by fumbling a snap, may have his misfortune eclipsed by all the haplessness of Grossman. And Adam Vinatieri wins again. He now has more rings than fingers.

That's about all that can be said about the sloshy game, which started on a high note as Chicago's Devin Hester returned the opening kick-off for a touchdown. What was ridiculous about this was that the Colts had prepared all week to defend against him, so the first thing they do is kick it right into his hands. Wouldn't it have been shrewder not to waste so much time girding for his returns but to kick it to the other side, as they did after each subsequent score on Sunday? That was about it for their ineptitude, though. To be fair to both teams, though, the steady rain made a certain mockery of the passing and ball-handling skills of both offenses. The Bears' hot start kept them in the game till the final fatal interception late in the fourth quarter, but they were totally outplayed for most of the contest, and the twelve-point differential hardly reflected the relative performances of the teams.

As usual, the event had its ancillary attractions, but its role as purveyor of breakthrough ad campaigns has been diminished by a dearth of inventive ideas. One problem is that two few accounts dominate the advertising. Anheuser-Busch has a monopoly on brewery advertising, and their ads were tired replicas of past successes. Doritos tried an interesting tack of inviting you-tube type amateur submissions, and they showed a little panache, if not slickness. The Coca-Cola ads were the most heartfelt, particularly an extravagant animation about a tough-guy turned civic saint who brings a spirit of generosity and love to a downtown region. And of course there were the cuddly talking animal spots, the most successful being a Blockbuster ad about dragging a "real" mouse to get to its computer site.

The stupidest ad, both shameful and shameless, was from Snickers, in which two tough mechanic types tried to share a Snickers bar and, in "Lady and the Tramp" style, found their lips meeting. Horrified, they start tearing out their own chest hair to prove their manliness. This was, I can only imagine, a nod to the pre-Super Bowl era, when such a scene might have raised an eyebrow or drawn a laugh at the most homophobic of sports bars. I can't imagine what the Mars people were thinking when they okayed this pitch. That's a lot of money to throw at an ad spot that would alienate a good portion of the population, if not Isaiah Washington. Subsequently gay activists such as GLAAD have already convinced the company to withdraw the commercial. The wrong kind of snickers, apparently.

At least somebody had a worse day than Rex Grossman.