Well, another year of football has officially drawn to a close (we all know that the Pro Bowl isn’t a real competition, but if you’re still interested in watching the NFL’s version of the all-star game, you can catch it this coming Saturday). I watched Super Bowl XLI with my brother on his widescreen HDTV, complete with 5.1 home theater surround sound, so it was certainly a more enjoyable experience that what I’m used to: watching football on a plain ol’ 27-inch boob tube.

The game itself had quite a few notable instances and events that are certainly worth discussing — I’ll leave the in-depth analysis to the experts — so I thought I’d quickly shoot through a few things before moving on to what some may consider to be the more important part of the 4-hour-long football game: the Super Bowl ads. After all, companies pay big bucks to get their 30 seconds of air time, easily surpassing $1 million per spot.

1. It was raining the whole game, which made for a very slippery ball. There were countless fumbles, including two back-to-back by the Rex Grossman, quarterback to the Chicago Bears. Several passes were dropped that probably would have otherwise been caught. We also saw Peyton Manning throw shorter passes and opt for the run more often than the longer bomb. This last point may be partially attributed to the Bears’ defence, which leads me to…

2. The Bears sucked on both sides of the ball. Their defence is easily “stronger” than their offence, but even then, they were coughing up all the short passes, and plenty of decent 10-yard (ish) runs. I felt they were too conservative by playing the safeties so far back. Urlacher should have come in for the blitz more often. And let’s not get started on Grossman’s play. (Although he had a QB rating of 120 at one point, that was only 30 yards and a touchdown. He ended the day well back of Peyton’s numbers. In fact, Mr. Manning went on to get the MVP award.)

3. Mr. Automatic Adam Vinatieri actually missed a field goal to close the first half. I was in shock.

4. Devin Hester returned the game’s opening kickoff for a touchdown. That’s a first in Super Bowl history.

Anyways, on with the ads. I noticed that most of them were in high-definition, and that a lot of the airtime was dedicated to Budweiser and Bud Light. There were a few that I thought were particularly amusing, and while they say that you can watch all of them on the CBS website, I can’t seem to get them to play on this laptop (a review unit from Systemax) for some reason. Go figure. In any case, I found several on YouTube (yes, already). Enjoy! (At least until the copyright owners come and tell GooTube to take ’em down)

Budweiser: Rock Paper Scissor

Nationwide Insurance: Kevin Federline (KFed) In the VIP

Fedex: Moon Office

Garmin: Maposaurus

CareerBuilder: Promotion Pit
Link to YouTube vid (they’re not allowing embedding)

Bud Light: Great Apes

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