It’s Super Bowl Sunday today, arguably the greatest day of the year for sports fans. You’d have expected that in the past two weeks the focus and hype surrounding the game would have talked about the teams involved in tonight’s bout. But thanks to Tim Tebow and his mom, Pam, the concern this year lands on the commercials that will air during the big game and not whether the Saints can contain Manning. I’ll be the first to say that the hoopla that the commercials get year in and out is undeserving – the notion that anyone watches the game for the commercials is contrived by marketing executives, not casual or non-fans.

Maybe there was a year or two in the 90′s when the commercials  – particularly for Budweiser – were so good that it was worth tuning in for them. That was a long time ago. The game’s changed since then, as has the landscape for the showdown. And then Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake came around and changed the mood even more with their halftime performance. Now, we approach the game with a much more watchful eye that elevates everything around the game minus the game itself. Perhaps there’s a belief that the game will always rise to be superior to the external controversies and distractions that creep up; the sad reality is that the game gets lost in the shuffle and, with some exceptions, provides a lackluster, anti-climactic conclusion to the festivities.
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