Things I Learned From (Almost) Watching The Super Bowl

Okay, so, I lied.

A couple of weeks ago, I boldly proclaimed I was not going to watch a single second of the Super Bowl this year. Considering a New York Giants-New England Patriots matchup was about as appealing to me as watching Snooki arm wrestle Kim Kardashian (On second thought, that might actually be kind of entertaining…), combined with the fact I could now watch all of the really good commercials on the Internet before the game was even played, I figured staying away from this year’s contest would be a piece of cake.

The evening began with my plan working to perfection, as my children were much more interested in the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet and America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC than they were in watching some dumb football game. Alas, both the Puppy Bowl and AFV had commercial breaks, and that was when the flesh began to grow weak. “Well,” I thought, “I’ll just flip over and check the score…” Even by doing this, though, I didn’t catch much of the first half.

As the game stretched on, though, and the kids shuffled off to bed for the night, I found myself watching a big chunk of the fourth quarter. Since the ending of the game featured Eli Manning (who I described my dislike of here) marching his team down the field virtually untouched (more on that later), I can’t say I was necessarily entertained by any of it. I did manage to come away with a few random observations, though, which I will now share.

1. Tom Brady is the new Joe Montana. Thanks to Eli and crew, Brady didn’t get to match Montana’s mark of four Super Bowl wins. Brady’s play sure did remind me Joe Cool, though, as he stood in the pocket for what seemed like hours and absolutely refused to run the football. It seemed to me like the Giants were just daring him to run, and he just wouldn’t take off. I counted at least three instances where Brady could have scrambled for a first down and still gotten out-of-bounds without taking a major hit. Brady’s always had the reputation of not wanting to take a hit (a perception which was only made worse by the NFL’s establishment of the “Brady Rule”), and he certainly didn’t do anything to disprove that view of him last night. Kind of made me long for a Tim Tebow appearance, to be honest.
2. It’s hard to turn down a free touchdown. I know Ahmad Bradshaw was trying to down the ball before that last touchdown, but who can turn down six points when absolutely no one has laid a finger on you on your way to the end zone? The fact that Bradshaw even had time to think about that play ought to indicate how terrible New England’s defense was. And while I know that conventional football wisdom called for kicking a field goal in that situation, the touchdown still only left the Patriots about a minute to score. Even Tom Terrific can’t work a miracle every time.
3. I want some of Madonna’s wrinkle cream. I only watched about five seconds of the halftime show last night. I saw Cee Lo Green, Madonna, and a marching band, and that was about it. I remarked shortly after the half on Facebook that it looked like Madonna’s face had been Photoshopped. That was either some great makeup or they were using that de-aging technology they used on Jeff Bridges in the last “Tron” movie.
4. Who the heck is MIA? As of this morning, I still have no idea, but I do know she flipped the bird to a television camera during the halftime show last night. At least Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” could, in some wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of way, be called an “accident.” I don’t recall every “accidentally” flipping somebody off. Maybe this was a “finger malfunction.” I mean, who hasn’t had one of those at some point or another?
5. The Avengers movie looks freakin’ awesome. Okay, this is actually cheating a little bit. I didn’t actually see the latest commercial for the upcoming Avengers movie during the game (I didn’t see MIA flip the bird, either. Man, I can’t be trusted at all anymore, can I?). I did watch it on-line during the game, however, so I’m going to go ahead and count this as a Super Bowl observation. Laugh at me if you must, but it almost brought tears to my eyes. I never thought I’d see the day a live-action movie like this would be made. I will be in line, somewhere, at midnight May 4.

That’s about all I can think of at the moment. Like I said, I didn’t really watch much of the game. I can tell you that a 9-week-old Chihuahua/Terrier mix named Fumble was the MVP (Most Valuable Puppy) of the Puppy Bowl. As you can guess, he ran the ball better than Tom Brady.