My observations on the commercials shown during the Super Bowl. My top five are at the bottom. I've moved the entire work below the break.

5:33 PM CST
I can't believe Burger King wasted two million dollars (or whatever obnoxious amount the spots are going for this year) on the "Whopperettes". 5:40 PM CST (That was a short four downs, Steelers.)
The "Magic Fridge" Bud commercial had me cracking up. 5:43 PM CST
Living in Texas, I get Spanish shoved down my throat enough, thanks, Toyota. I liked the FedEx "Caveman" commercial. Something very Dilbertian about it. Regarding it and the Bud Light "Bear attack" commercial, my wife ponders "Why do people think people getting killed or mauled is funny?" 5:51 PM CST
The Diet Pepsi-"Diddy" commercial left me flat. Nice use of an iPod, though. 5:58 PM CST
The Ameriquest "That killed'em" commercial is hysterical. 6:05 PM CST
The Diet Pepsi-Jackie Chan "Stunt double" commercial is genius. SBC-AT&T, ho-hum. Can we work on upgrading the Cingular network instead of flushing money down the Super Bowl bowl? 6:12 PM CST
You would expect there to be a Budweiser Clydesdale football game commerical. You weren't expecting the "Streaker", were you? Mobile ESPN: I like my sports, but... 6:17 PM CST
The CareerBuilder.com monkey commercials are soooo played. Cadillac's Escalade coming up through the model runway is a cool effect, but otherwise a yawner. 6:19 PM CST
They are looking for any excuse to go to commercial, aren't they? Tom Cruise attempts to get you to donate more money to Scientology with the third installment of the Mission Impossible movie franchise. I think it speaks highly of Dove that they spent their Super Bowl money on the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. 6:25 M CST
Further proof Disney has run out of creative ideas: let's remake The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen. Ford scores big with Kermit the Frog and "It Ain't Easy Being Green" for the new Escape Hybrid. (Take note, Toyota.) The Michelob Ultra "Touch Football" commercial doesn't score. 6:35 PM CST
I've already seen GoDaddy's commercial, and it's certainly the least risque thing they've run to date. (Only because this was the fourteenth cut of the commercial, and the network finally allowed it.) 6:38 PM CST
Further proof all of Hollywood has run of original ideas: let's remake The Poseidon Adventure and shorten the title. In case you couldn't figure out that Gilette was releasing a five-blade shaver with all the teasers they've been airing the past two weeks, they actually show you the razor this go-around. The extended Desperate Housewives plug with Shaq, Hawk, Sugar Ray (the boxer, younglings, not the band), and Hef brought a smile. 6:42 PM CST
A typical Overstock.com commercial. 6:44 PM CST
Good call, bringing in Kelsey Grammar to voice the Walt Disney World 50th Anniversary commercial. 6:55 PM CST
I was wondering what the Sprint "Crime Deterrent" was going to be. That got a smile out of me. I thought the NFL Network's Super Bowl "Today we're all unified" commercial was appropriately touching. Nothing new with Nissan's Xterra commercial. More bragging over the Motor Trend award. BREAK, BREAK. HALF TIME SHOW.
The Rolling Stones may have been a "safe" choice, but they sound like crap. What a shocker they open with "Start Me Up", the most recognized Stones song to the modern generation, thanks to Microsoft. Another thought: are the Stones heavy investors in those cryogenic businesses out in Arizona? Maybe next year the network and league can come up with some entertainment that's not putting out music no one listens to and has to rely on its thirty-plus year-old hits and brainless fans who show up tour after tour to shell out money to hear the same songs over and over. 7:20 PM CST
The Ford Mustang commercial you've been seeing for...well, quite awhile. Typical cute commercial from Jack-in-the-Box. One of the Nissan Titan "Work Truck" commercials featuring the theme from Stripes. Is your local news channel putting out commercials like our ABC affiliate, touting their news team? 7:25 PM CST
The Disney commercials with the Seattle and Pittsburgh players practicing "I'm going to Disneyland!" is genius. 7:34 PM CST
I thought the time lapse of the meteor rock was pretty cool. Didn't think it would result in a mobile phone being deposited on a beach. 7:42 PM CST
Budweiser's "I won't tell if you won't" commercial with the pony "pulling" the beer wagon is cute. Nationwide's "Fabio shampoo" commercial starts off kind of funny, then gets creepy. I liked the "Old Days" NFL Mobile commercial. "We ate non-organic foods and had to use the Internet!" 7:49 PM CST
Like most Hummer commercials, the "Love is Strange" one for the H3, featuring the giant robot and Godzilla clone having a "baby" just struck me as kind of, well, stupid. The PS cleaning solutions commercial with everyone in biohazard suits was cute. 7:54 PM CST
I didn't see it coming in CareerBuilder's "That's okay, I work with a bunch of jackasses." That brought a chuckle. The latest in Taco Bell's "Good to Go" series for the Crunchwrap Supreme, featuring geek love. She's pretty cute; ever since my love and I both started wearing spectacles, I'm noticing more cute chicks with them. 8:01 PM CST
Toyota is 0-2, this time with one of their "indestructible" truck commercials. The commercials shows a Tacoma, via time-lapse photography/video surveillance, getting bounced around by ocean waves while the owner is out kayaking or surfing, or something. Note to Toyota: try making a truck that doesn't look effeminate, then we'll talk about how tough they are. 8:14 PM CST
Another Sprint commercial, on music downloads to your phone, with a burning couch. Nice usage of the sideline hash marks as sound levels in ESPN's Monday Night Football spot. Here in DFW, we got a Dodge MegaCab truck commercial, and an American Airlines spot featuring a guy packing for his wife so he can take her on a surprise dinner trip out of town. Ho-hum spot for the Acura RL. 8:23 PM CST
Degree's spot highlights a stunt man in various every day situations taken to the extreme. I've never found the Emerald's Nuts commercials very funny, and the "Druid under the stairs" one doesn't so anything to change that. The Fidelity-Paul McCartney spot you've seen numerous times before. 8:29 PM CST
Totally computer-generated, of course, but the Bud commercial that purports to show fans in a stadium with those flip signs pouring beer from a bottle to a glass is decent. The MasterCard-MacGuyver spot is the best of the night. 8:34 PM CST
Another Mobile ESPN spot. Nice Honda Ridgeline commercial featuring mud flap characters, who have "been around trucks for a long time". Here's to Beer offers "Cheers" in multiple languages. 8:40 PM CST
Great spot for the World Baseball Classic. The GoDaddy spot airs again. The ESPN Monday Night Football spot airs again. Commerical for the new Ford Explorer. (Was this a DFW/Texas-only spot?) 8:53 PM CST
Spot for the movie Running Scared. Outback Steakhouse commercial with a guy speaking in an Australian accent trying to pry a boomerang off the wall. The whole schtick is "coming back". Spot from the Westin hotel chain, announcing they're going all non-smoking. Pro Bowl spot that I didn't really get. Game Over
I consider these spots shown immediately after the conclusion of the game to be the last Super Bowl commercials of the night. Blockbuster lets everyone in the nation know they're going after Netflix. The same TGIFriday's you've seen for the past few weeks, what appears to be a new All State insurance spot, and the same Expedia.com "Calendar" commercial they've been showing lately. Top Five
These are my favorite commercials from tonight. 1. MasterCard's "MacGuyver" 2. Bud's "Magic Fridge" 3. Ameriquest "That killed'em" 4. Diet Pepsi-Jackie Chan "Stunt Can" 5. Bud's "Streaker"

Three and a half hours of pre-game coverage wasn't enough time to get through all of the crap leading up to this game that you had to waste the first ten minutes of the "official" start of game coverage with the introduction of the MVPs from the previous thirty-nine Super Bowls? Regarding the National Anthem: why do great singers feel compelled to remind us they're great singers when they get up to sing "The Star Spangled Banner"? (I'm looking at you, Mr. Neville.) Just sing the song and show it some respect. (Side note to ABC and the NFL: you're having a big enough spectacle at half time. There's no need to make our National Anthem one, too.) Did the Seattle Seahawks pick "Bittersweet Symphony" as the song to play when they were introduced? Dudes. Bad song to pick for a football game for the name alone. Bad song to pick for a football game for the music. (And I like the song.) Then again, at least I recognized "Bittersweet Symphony". The same cannot be said for the song which played when the Steelers were introduced. Though the Steelers are the "road" team, they certainly appear to be the fans-in-the-stands favorite. Not surprising, given Detroit homeboy Jerome Bettis leading Pittsburgh on to the field.

Yes, they should.

Above is the proposed billboard to be placed in a high-traffic area near the USC campus. LSU grads in the Dallas area, annoyed by the media coverage over USC's attempt at "a third-straight national championship", have raised the necessary $10,000 for the proposed billboard, and are working with a Mobile firm in scouting for a suitable location. As you would imagine, even the Bruins are happy about it. The message here, people, is that the Bowl Championship Series was created for the sole purpose of providing the means, in lieu of a playoff system, to determine the one, true national champion of Division I-A college football. God knows I have my myriad issues with the BCS, but it is, despite its faults, the system in place, and it should be respected. This is the vein of the message from Onepeat.com. [Via Hugh via Xon.]

Unlike the Tigers, the other SEC team that played yesterday apparently didn't show up to play the whole game. South Carolina put up 21 unanswered points, then it was nearly all-Missouri the rest of the way. The Gamecocks managed to wake up in the fourth quarter, and tied the game at 31 aside before succumbing to Mizzou. Steve Spurrier becomes the first SEC coach to lose at the Independence Bowl in thirteen straight appearances, ending the conference's streak. As if we needed another reason to dislike Spurrier.

A new head coach. A devastating hurricane. Opening season games rescheduled. A heartbreaking overtime loss in what became the home opener, played on a Monday night rather than the traditional Saturday night due to another hurricane. Then ten straight weeks of games. Ten straight wins. Then the eleventh game, in the eleventh week. For the conference championship. For a trip to the Sugar Bowl. For a chance to contend for the BCS National Championship crown, should one of the other favorites stumble. But the hurricanes and the eleven weeks of practice, preparation, and playing take their toll, and the worst loss of the season is suffered. Adding injury to insult, the star quarterback is lost. Cast down, sentenced to the next rung below the hallowed Bowl Championship Series. Ranked number ten, facing number nine. The second-team quarterback is at the helm, in his first college career start. All of the pundits pick the number nine opponent. The fans pick the number nine opponent. On the same turf as the crushing loss three weeks before... Oh, there were a few souls outside of Louisiana who picked the Tigers to beat Miami. Lou Holtz, God bless him, appears to be the only soul inside the USC-crazed ESPN crew without Trojan-emblazoned blinders on; he picks LSU as the winner of the 2005 Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl. By the end of the night, Lou is vindicated. Things went great for the Miami Hurricanes. For about five minutes. On their first possession, they drove solidly down the field. The LSU defense, which collapsed against Georgia in the SEC Championship, held the Hurricanes to a field goal. It would be the only points Miami would score for the entire game. It would be a game of few penalties, and fewer turnovers. Only one, an interception by the LSU defense against Miami's freshman quarterback, put in the last four minutes of the game. It would be a game where many different words would be used to describe the play of the Fighting Tigers, of what happened to Miami, but it all keeps coming back to one word in particular. Domination. LSU dominated the line of scrimmage, on both sides, from their first offensive series onward. The Tigers would score on eight straight possessions, beginning with the series that tied the game at three apiece. Miami managed a mere 153 yards of total offense. Three of those yards was their total for the second half. The number-one pass defense in the country would give up 196 airborne yards and two touchdowns, without netting a single interception. The third-ranked overall Miami defense would give up a total of 468 yards, the most it has given up all season. The Miami offense would manage only six first downs. None of those were in the second half. The 37-point loss would be their worst bowl loss in school history. This was the LSU team many expected to see this season. The team was disciplined, poised. The team was supportive of their new quarterback, and bent over backwards to take as much burden off of him as possible. The team was confident with Matt Flynn at the helm. JaMarcus Russell is an incredible athlete. His play this year has been light-years better than last season. Yet Coach Les Miles may have to take a serious look at the position in the off-season. The better man for the job may have just led his team to a 40-3 victory over the last Hurricanes of the year.

Speaking of college football, I have the Music City Bowl on in the background, and I noticed a few moments ago a commercial on behalf of the Football Bowl Association. Clearly, this is an opening salvo to maintain the status quo and not allow a playoff system for NCAA Division I-A football, the only level of any major college sport to not have a playoff system.

Jonathan Chait weighs in on why USC is overrated, noting how ESPN is leading the sports media in a frothing charge to bestow on the Trojans their--ahem--"third-straight" national championship. [Thanks to my sweet for the Slate link.]

Apparently, all common sense has left NCAA Divison I-A football rankings. Like we didn't know that already. Let me see if I get this straight: LSU begins the year with a new head coach; overcomes the fallout of Hurricane Katrina; has its season opener rescheduled to an off-week later in the season; has its second game, originally scheduled as a home game, played on the road, with a spectacular fourth-down play to win the game as time expires; has its third scheduled game of the year, now the first actual home game of the season, moved from Saturday night to Monday night, thanks to Hurricane Rita; loses said game to Tennessee in overtime, sloppily giving up a 21-point lead and allowing the Volunteers to tie the game; then wins every single game for the rest of the season, including beating Auburn, Alabama, and Florida, to clinch the SEC West. The Tigers lose--and rightfully so, given the way they played--to Georgia in the SEC title game. So going in, LSU is the #3 or #4 team in the country, the #1 team in the SEC, but fails to clinch the championship. So this means a drop in the rankings for the Tigers, and they become the #2 team in the SEC, with the same record as Georgia, right? That would be a no. Not only did LSU fall out of the Top 10, to the likes of Notre Dame, Oregon, and Miami, because the loss--in the championship game--to Georgia gives them two conference losses, somehow Auburn--you remember Auburn, the team LSU defeated earlier in the season?--becomes the #2 team in the SEC and gets the bid for the Capital One Bowl. LSU goes to the Peach Bowl instead. Not that I have anything against the Peach Bowl, seeing as how it's sponsored by my favorite fast food chain. But it's no Capital One Bowl. (NCAA football trivia: give the name of the Capital One Bowl before it was co-opted by corporate interests.) So the trend continues. The Tigers got little respect, if any, in 2003 when they won the national championship, and given all they have been through this season, they get none at the end of the season either. Michael, Eric, my empathy with you deepens every year.

Let's see: renewing the Patriot Act, the Senate needing to confirm Bush's judicial nominees, as well as a Supreme Court nominee, et cetera, et cetera. So what do they turn their attention to? Why, the Bowl Championship Series, of course. Pay attention, because this is likely one of the few political issues Lawson and I will agree on: Representative Barton, you're wasting your time, your colleagues' time, the time of BCS board members, and taxpayer dollars. Congress has no business sticking its nose in to the BCS mess. I wouldn't go as far as Barton in saying the BCS is "deeply flawed," though it has made some whoppers in the past few years: picking Oklahoma over USC to face LSU in 2003, and picking Oklahoma over Auburn to face USC in 2004 immediately spring to mind. The solution to the problems of the BCS is not a Congressional investigation. Rather, the football bigwigs at the NCAA need to get together with the various bowl organizers and sponsors and develop a playoff system for Division I-A football where the championship game will be rotated among the bigger bowls. As the ESPN article notes, there's a lot of money in the bowl games, particularly the BCS bowls, and a playoff system would theoretically kill off some of those dollars. I don't believe that would happen; look at March Madness with NCAA Division I-A basketball. Nevertheless, the overriding issue is money. If it wasn't, then the cadets and midshipmen wouldn't be crammed into the corners of the stadium for the annual Army-Navy game, but would be seated, out of respect, directly behind their teams' benches. (We wouldn't see that awful swoosh logo on those classically minimalist uniforms, either.) Until the NCAA and the bowls figure out a way to not lose money, we won't see the much-needed playoff system--for the only sport in Division I-A without a playoff system--for college football, and we will continue to have controversy over whom should play for the championship, and which team is truly number one.

It rains nine months out of the year in Seattle. So why oh why would you replace an aging dome with an open-air stadium? Collective stupidity?

Or, The case against USC as #1. You can blame the following on my friend Francisco, who got me started earlier this evening during an instant messaging chat. Looking around college football, I continue to be amazed at how USC can be consistently ranked as the number-one football team in the country, given the conference they play in. It is very similar to the 1980s and 1990s, when Miami and Florida State were consistently picked as the #1 team any given year. I have deduced it is a form of coastal elitism on the part of the poll voters, much like the coastal elitism one has found recently in national elections and politics. The majority of your sports media are concentrated on either coast of the nation. Their attention, therefore, is drawn to the teams likewise concentrated on either coast, to the detriment of the quality teams in the quality conferences in between the two coasts, a la "flyover country." These quality conferences are the SEC, the Big 10, and the Big 12. It's very easy to go undefeated in the Big East when you're playing against such powerhouses as Rutgers or Temple. Viz: Florida State K.O.'ed Duke today, and that's worthy of their #11 ranking. At least now we have FSU, Miami, and Virginia Tech all in the same conference, the ACC. Too bad they are the only quality teams in the ACC, which means one of these three will, for the foreseeable future, always win the conference championship and contend for a national title. Miami's presence was the only reason the Big East was ever in the BCS, since they were the only team from the Big East ever contending for the national championship. Now that Miami is in the ACC, the BCS needs to dump the Big East as an automatic BCS bowl-eligible conference. USC is to the 2000s what FSU and Miami were to the '80s and '90s. They are the lone dominate team in their conference, so they go undefeated while beating up on the likes of Washington and Arizona. Then they have to worry about a single tough game at the end of the year, and having been built up by their success over mediocre teams and by the national sports media, they prevail. Looking back at the 2003 season, it is a complete joke that USC, and the national sports media which backs it, should insist on a shared national title with LSU. (Disclaimer: I grew up in Baton Rouge and am a LSU alum, so yes, I'm biased. At least I admit it.) I agree that it was a travesty that USC did not get to play against LSU in the Sugar Bowl. I believe the same national sports media which lauds and supports USC today was also blinded by a declining Oklahoma program, and gave that team more votes than it deserved. Be that as it may, the BCS determined that LSU and Oklahoma would square off for the national title. The BCS used the same polls the national sports media voted in to make this determination. LSU won the Sugar Bowl, and was crowned college football's national champion. But the AP and USA Today poll voters rebelled against the BCS, and anointed Rose Bowl winner USC the number one spot. USC, and the national sports media which voted for them, thus claims a shared national title with LSU, the very thing the BCS was created to prevent. This is despite, counting their respective bowl game opponents, that LSU beat four Top 20 teams during the course of the year while USC only beat two. You can make the argument LSU beat five Top 20 teams, but the BCS doesn't credit LSU's SEC championship victory over Georgia, since that was the second time that year the Tigers were victorious over the Bulldogs. This is despite the fact that Georgia was ranked higher at the time of the SEC championship than they were earlier in the year when they first lost to LSU. Using the BCS's strength of schedule statistic, Georgia was a tougher opponent the second time around, and LSU beat them by a larger margin of victory. LSU also played one more game (the conference championship) in 2003 than USC did. Statistically, LSU was the superior team. They played in the BCS championship game, and they prevailed. The Fighting Tigers of LSU are the sole national champions of college football for 2003. Let us allow, for a moment, that there is a shared title for 2003 between LSU and USC. I, for one, would then like USC and the national sports media to acknowledge a shared national title for 2004 between USC and Auburn. Each team went 13-0. Including their bowl game opponents, Auburn beat five Top 20 teams to USC's three. Again, the SEC team has the strength of schedule argument firmly in its camp. Auburn was denied the BCS shot, just as USC was the year before, by a national sports media still enamored with Oklahoma. You would think USC would have some empathy for Auburn, but no. USC worshippers' argument against a shared title for 2004 is that USC both won the BCS championship game and got the poll votes. My contention is that the poll votes are only useful as part of determining who is in the BCS championship game. After that particular game is over, who cares what else happened in the other bowl games? Hence, my contention that USC has no claim to a shared title in 2003. That brings us to the 2005 season, and the end of week 9. USC is still #1, with Texas #2. (Disclaimer: I am a resident of the state of Texas, though I have no personal affiliation with the University of Texas, other than I would like to see the schools of my home state do well. Again, at least I admit to bias, little though it may be.) Up to this stage of the season, both teams have played the same number of Top 20 teams: three. However, Texas's opponents have been higher ranked, and given those opponents, the wins more impressive. I look at Texas's win over Ohio State as more impressive than USC's win over Notre Dame. Certainly, the win by the Longhorns over Texas Tech today was more impressive than USC's victory over Washington. This is not to say that I think USC is a mediocre football team. I think they are a very good football team. A very good football team in a mediocre conference. If I were voting, and in control of college football rankings, I could easily see a two-way tie for first. USC is neither of those teams. My two-way tie would be Texas-Georgia. USC comes in at #3, with Virgina Tech trailing them, not at their current #3 spot. Looking at the history of college football over the past 30 years, it is consistently harder for an undefeated team to emerge from the SEC, the Big 10, or the Big 12, because a majority of the teams in those conferences are quality teams. Conversely, in the PAC 10, ACC, and Big East, in the past 30 years, a minority of teams in those conferences have been quality teams. Yet there is a disproportionate amount of these minority teams claiming the national title. The PAC 10 is a stronger conference in 2005 than it was in 2003 or 2004. California and UCLA have both stepped up their game, and UCLA holds the same record as the Trojans of USC. (Yet they're ranked down at #9; what does this say about the Trojans' ranking at #1? That it's overrated and undeserved, that's what.) Yet saying the PAC 10 is a stronger conference in 2005 is like saying the ACC is a stronger conference in 2004, when Miami joined to form the championship triumvirate with FSU and Virginia Tech. As conferences, these two are not in the same league as the SEC, Big 10, and Big 12. And that fact should carry some weight when it comes to poll voting. The BCS isn't a perfect system for determining a national champion, and I have admitted as much in the past. Nick Saban, who led LSU to their championship for the 2003 season, stated he would like to see something on the order of "BCS plus one." That would have eliminated the debate over a shared title with USC. (What would have eliminated the debate over a shared title is if the poll voters and the BCS would have gotten it right and put USC against LSU in the first place.) Auburn coach Tommy Tupperville echoed Saban's sentiment a year later, when his team was denied a shot at USC. What is hinted at in this statement is something I have long contended: it's time for a playoff system in college football, the only major sport without one. Rankings can be used to determine seeds, and you can use the bowls as the setting for the playoff games, continuing to rotate which bowl is the championship game. In the end, you have a single team standing, and no one making a claim for a split title.

The Northwestern College Eagles, NCAA Division III, have done something no other college football team at any level has ever done: played two games in a single day. They started the day 3-2, and finished 5-2, outscoring their two opponents 106-14 and accumulating more than 1,000 yards of offense. Bravo, Eagles, bravo.

Attention Steve Levy and the rest of ESPN's anchors: USC did not win the national championship in 2003. USC did not win the national championship in 2003. USC did not win the national championship in 2003. The Trojans did not play in the BCS national championship game for the 2003 season. The BCS was created to determine a single national champion. For 2003, that national champion is LSU. USC is not a two-time defending national champion. If you continue to insist they are, then I expect you to also refer to Auburn as a current defending national champion.

Can someone please explain to me why the Miami Hurricanes continue to be voted the #1 college football team in the country? I mean, look at these football powerhouses that Miami plays: Florida A&M, Temple, Connecticut, Rutgers, and Syracuse (sorry, Jim). They may play two or three good teams a year, and this is worthy of a national championship?

We are in desperate need of a playoff system for college football to determine a true national champion. We do it for every other major sport: the College World Series, the Final Four for basketball, and the Frozen Four for hockey. Why can we not do this for football?

The system is already in place with the various bowl games we have at the end of the year. You rotate the championship game from bowl to bowl like the BCS does now, and the other bowl games are part of the playoff system. I guess it’s the simple, common sense things that elude us sometimes.