Fantasy Football

So a few follow up comments that seem to be lingering from the Super Bowl. We meant to get to this yesterday, but as we mentioned over at Grid Effect we were at work until 7PM and that means two things: 1) We were actually busy and couldn’t get around to posting anything, and 2) we were too tired when we got back from work to be hassled with it. So, here we are. And its almost good we got the extra day to get a general picture of how everyone is reacting to everything.

For anyone complaining about the lack of a review on Arizona’s final play of the game: There were five seconds left and you had roughly half the field to go. While I think you were robbed of the opportunity for a win and the audience for an even more satisfying conclusion (as it looked like an incomplete pass to me), the refs certainly didn’t steal the game from you. Santonio Holmes and Ben Roethlisberger took the liberty of doing that.

Much like every year in the Super Bowl, there are a plethora of players on the winning team who could be awarded MVP. Harrison took himself out of it with that personal foul on the punt that pinned them even closer to their own end zone, so it was between Roethlisberger and Holmes. Considering Big Ben threw an interception and Holmes was his primary target the entire game (though Heath Miller may have been for the first half), I am content with Holmes being awarded the MVP. As great as Roethlisberger was on that last drive, the degree of difficulty on Holmes’ TD catch warrants the award on its own. Not to mention his cumulative stats (something David Tyree lacked last year and why it was default awarded to Eli Manning).

If you noticed that we haven’t mentioned the commercials and were wondering why, it’s quite simple: We can’t find a lot of humor in people trying to con us into buying their products. Even if we did, the creativity is sorely lacking. Can we get something other than nut shots, attractive women and animals afflicted with sentient problems? If you want me to buy your product and are going to spend millions of dollars throwing together and advertising campaign, it would stand to reason that you would invest more than one work weekend into it.

When did they turn Chester Cheetah into a total scumbag?

Also, for at least half of the advertisers I can’t think of a single, solitary reason they have to invest that much money into a series of commercials. Is Budweiser still in such heated competition with anyone that throwing millions of dollars into TV spots is necessary? Same with Career Builder and Monster.com. Not only does their net worth pale in comparison to that of Budweiser, isn’t everyone going to their sites anyways? I know when the economy and American way of life is in peril, I’m supposed to root for commerce, but I would have been perfectly fine with fewer commercials.

And finally, after any entertaining Super Bowl, especially one with a climactic finish, there is a groundswell of people quick to proclaim it the Best. Ever. I suppose if you’re going to have this conversation then it’s definitely a part of it, but on the list of Super Bowls we drummed up that only dated back to Green Bay’s first title in 1996, I’d probably rank it fourth behind last year’s game, the Packers-Broncos in 1997 and the Rams-Titans game in 1999. It’s generous to put it at fourth in front of the first two Patriots titles as well, we’ll call it a dead heap between those three for fourth place.

When you are trying to quantify something like “Greatest Ever” in sports, you have to take everything into consideration: Back story, historical significance, star power, efficiency, execution, entertainment level, etc. And while Sunday’s fourth and second quarters were wildly entertaining, I thought I was staring down the barrel of another Seahawks-Steelers game before Arizona got rolling. The star power was fairly high in this game, but there were eighteen total penalties many of which came during pivotal points of the game (Adrian Wilson running over the place holder, the aforementioned Harrison penalty, pass interference on the Cardinals last touchdown drive, etc).

So while we’ll look back on it fondly because the last seven or eight minutes were so eventful (and that’s all that really matters), when I recall that game it’s more along the lines of, “the emotional fluctuation was immense” more so than “Never at any moment was I not entertained”. You’re going to tell me that it was fascinating to watch the Steelers just peeling minutes off the clock in the first and third quarters, capped by them being unable to get in the end zone? Fine, but I beg to differ.

Maybe back with some news and notes later.