It’s the week of the Super Bowl, which translates into a week of hype.
- Will Bret Favre congratulate Aaron Rodgers if he wins?!
- Does another championship ring make up Ben Roethlisberger’s off-season indiscretions?! (If he does it again this year, does he have to win another Super Bowl to avoid jail time, or will a mere playoff appearance do?)
- Will the defense of either team show up this week?!
- Which company will put out the commercial of the year?!
If you asked number four, then congratulations: you’re an idiot. If you’re paid to answer number 4, then you are a hack and should be forced to wear a frilly dress the next time you go to a bar with more than one television on the wall.
What’s that? You don’t think that assessment is fair? Read on to find out why you’re a tool, chump.
You spend the rest of the year avoiding commercials.
How much did you shell out for Tivo? But it’s worth it, right, because it records your favorite programs, and you can fast-forward through the commercials?
What about those pop-up blockers you installed? How are they working out for you?
Or remember how you groaned when that action-packed TV show went to commercial in the middle of a cliffhanger?
Suddenly paying attention to advertising the one day a year that corporations pay more is like watching the Oscars: you’ve never seen the winners, and you’re not going to until they’re loosely remade with Eddie Murphy and CGI animals.
All of the commercials suck.
The only reason you’re paying attention is because the advertisers pay more. But there’s no improvement in quality. I’ll lay out all of this year’s ads for you right now:
Ads for eTrade will feature a baby sounding exactly like the kind of stock trading douche bag you’d tar and feather at your bar. Well, in your head. In reality, you’ll passive-aggressively key his Boxster. Or at least make fun of it out of earshot because it’s barely a Porsche.
Point is, that guy sucks, and here’s a version of him that has his ass hand washed by a grown adult. Man, f@%k that baby.
(SeriouslyGuys does not endorse sexual intercourse with babies, even to punish that baby for wearing a bluetooth.)
GoDaddy will remind you that you could be watching actual pornography online right now, except you invited people over to watch the game. Instead, you have Danica Patrick stuck in your head while trying to pound one out in the bathroom. You’re gonna be a while.
Budweiser will alternate between the same recycled horse crap and an imaginary world where men behave stupidly to demonstrate brand loyalty to the most ubiquitous beer in the world. Being a vocal supporter of Bud Light is like presiding over the Male Fans of Handjobs meeting. A) No s#!t, and B) blowjobs are better.
Some random-ass company will get in trouble for racism, sexism, violence or some glorious combination of all three, guaranteeing that every socially-conscious columnist will write about their brand for a week.
Football takes too long because of commercials.
The length of actual playing time in a professional football game is one hour.
The average length of televised time of a game takes three hours. This three-hour block accounts for time outs, half-time, injuries, coaches’ challenges and commercials. If enough time outs are not used up, then the network enforces a “TV Time Out” because there’s commerce to be conducted.
The Super Bowl takes (on average) four hours. Part of that extra hour comes from the halftime show that is always so terrible that I’d rather watch more commercials. The other part of that is made up of inspirational promos for the players so that the people who don’t watch football will actually remember the names of a few players.
Me: So the Roethlisberger I avoided like a date rapist in college really showed up last night …
You: Oh, you mean the guy whose mom got cancer last fall, so he dedicated his season to her?
Me: … No, that was Nancy Kerrigan in the 1994 Winter Olympics, only it was her knee and it got piped. I understand your confusion, though, since both were shot in soft focus and you’re a numbskull.
I’m not saying that I expect a game to take just over an hour. I am saying that the rest is filler that gets longer every year because some 10 million morons “only watch it for the commercials.”
