DisSuggs4u

Yesterday evening was the grand conclusion to another NFL season. As is usually the case, it was the only NFL game I watched all year. In general, I am not a very big professional sports fan — other than professional cycling — and usually occupy my time doing other things. However, my wife and I make a special case for the Super Bowl wherein we head down to the Alamo Draft House to watch the game on the movie screen. This year was no different.

Most of the time, we watch are more interested in the commercials than the game itself, which is ironic considering that I habitually avoid commercials at any other time. This year, though, we found the game to be considerably more entertaining that the commercial breaks. For the most part, if you missed the first quarter, you missed all the good commercials.

And what was up with all the CBS commercials? It seemed like every break was one or two mediocre commercials, and then three super-crappy CBS commercials. I guess we needed constant reminders of why we don’t watch CBS… other than during the Super Bowl.

As for the rest of them, my wife and I both enjoyed the Bud Lite wedding commercial with the auctioneer, followed by the one involving rochambeau. I am glad that Budweiser was one of the companies who continued to entertain us with their commercials, hoping to disguise the fact that they make a nasty tasting beer.

Otherwise, the commercials fell mostly flat or made no sense. The fan-made Doritos commercial at the beginning of the game was good. The one later in the game involving the grocery checkout lady was very good only at forcefully removing Doritos from my stomach (and otherwise killing my appetite).

General Motors’ marketing agency seemed to believe that if they drowned us in their advertising then we would be more inclined to purchase their crappy vehicles. (After seeing the sixth Chevy commerical, I thought to myself that they should have probably spent that money funding their worker’s pensions.) They were pushing for a page out of Ford’s playbook by promoting “quality” in their vehicles. General Motors also tried to promote their focus on producing economic vehicles… by highlighting the apparent ONLY vehicle that gets above 30 miles per gallon.

It was therefore very funny, in a schadenfreude kind of way, when Honda showed a single commercial that not only emphasized their standard of high quality and economical vehicles across their entire vehicle line, but it also destroyed GM’s volume marketing approach with a single ad. Well done, Honda.

The Toyota commercials were also good both for their dramatic effect and the apparent “actual demonstration” of their truck’s performance — at least that is what the text at the bottom of the commercial said.

The other big commercial flop was Pepsi’s sponsored half-time show. Ugh. Do not get me wrong. I like Prince and think he is a very talented singer. This, however, was absolutely not his target audience or a good venue for his style of music. I am betting the only reason he was chosen was so that CBS could hopefully prevent a “wardrobe malfunction” of years past. The half-time show could have used some extra spice, though. Most, if not all, of the songs he played were hits in the 80s. Overall, I give Pepsi’s half-time show a D… minus.

As for the game, like I said above it was pretty entertaining. The rain made it sloppy and led to a series of turnovers on both sides, some of them even back to back. Chicago started out very strong, but that was until their QB (Rex Grossman) got his hands on the ball. I am not sure if it was lack of experience or nerves, but he sure looked skiddish and seemed to panic under pressure and then throw the ball to the other team. (Not exactly qualities you want to see in your quarterback.) The Colt’s QB (Payton Manning) on the other hand handled himself very well under the conditions and pressure of the game, twice making excellent passes while in the process of being tackled.

Overall, it was a very good game and the Colt’s earned the win. It would have been an even closer game had the Bear’s QB played better.

The overall experience, including commercials and half-time can be summed up in one word: meh.