"My husband can not f****ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times."
Pretty sure Gisele Bundchen's little rant while leaving the VIP suites after the game last night is gonna go over like a fart in church with Tom Brady's teammates. That said, it's great to see a supermodel show a little passion for the game. Too often these beautiful women are trotted out for all to see and we never get to hear their thoughts on the actual game. Also awesome? The Giants fans who trash-talked Ms. Bundchen to get her riled up enough to rant in the first place.
We know that many of you simply tune into the NFL's Super Bowl (or visit websites like this one) for the latest over-the-top-sometimes-too-far-but-often-funny-and-extravagant TV commercials that companies pay millions of dollars for. With that mind we've grabbed what we think are the best commercials of Super Bowl XLVI and placed them all in one convenient place for you. And your friends. Check them all out and let us know which commercials you thought were the best.
In no particular order (well, in order of when they aired), here are our favourites:
Welcome to The Cheap Seats Super Bowl footballapallooza. We'll be talking football, ads, Madonna and whatever else happens tonight in Indianapolis.
Kicking things off country Barbie and Ken duo Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton sang "America the Beautiful." Lambert with a tastefully bedazzled pink microphone. Striking. Cue the requisite soldier shots from Afghanistan. Soon after Kelly Clarkson belted out the Star-Spangled Banner with her own bedazzled mic. To the football!
First Quarter
While largely seen as an evenly matched game and everyone expecting a nailbiter, the New York Giants opened early and weird with a safety after Brady was charged with an intentionl grounding in his own end zone. Stat alert: It was the the 7th safety in Super Bowl history. 2-0 Giants.
Towards the end of the first quarter, the Pats were caught with 12 men on the field, after which the Giants QB ELi Manning fed Victor Cruz for a touchdown and a 9-0 lead. Up to that point, the Pats seemed flat and couldn't get anything going. But of course, never underestimate a man who married Gisele Bundchen. Tom Brady then promptly marched that Pats down the field and ended the quarter inside the Giants' 20-yard line and a 1st down.
Everybody loves some rec hockey. Skills on the decline, glory days long past, it's just one night a week where we can go to yell at each other to get back on defence, miss an open net or two and maybe get in an exagerrated slapfight with a stranger. Fun times.
Four Toronto-area rec teams got their weekly ritual jazzed up this week thanks to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Budweiser. Two separate incidents, same joyous result. (Well, the Bud one probably had more free beer.) First, Budweiser yesterday unveiled its Super Bowl ad for Canadian TV that's being widely hailed as one of the best in a while, and perhaps even better than the U.S. ads. Which would be nice considering Canadians are often blocked from seeing the real big game spots. (Don't start flag-waving just yet, as it was created by an American ad agency.) Anyway, Les Amigos and Toronto Generals in Port Credit, ON were surprised when a rinkful of cheering fans, play-by-play, mascots, trainers, sports casters and more showed up mid-game.
Then this week, the Colts and Delta Force, who play at York University's rink, were treated to new sweaters and Mikhail Grabovski, Nikolai Kulemin, Colby Armstrong and Tim Connolly showed up in their dressing rooms as coaches for the night. According to the Toronto Star, the Adult Safe Hockey League (ASHL) match "was transformed into a Toronto Maple Leafs game experience complete with Joe Bowen broadcasting the play by play for fans and announcer Andy Frost introducing each player as he skated onto the ice." Well, holy makinaw.
How do you cut through the clutter of Super Bowl hype to provide readers with a value-added preview of the Big Game?
I’m glad you asked.
It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. If it was, everybody’d be doing it. Wait a minute, everybody IS doing it. I think I even saw a special Super Bowl edition of The Mentalist the other day, and I’m pretty sure Tom Brady is on the cover of this month’s Creative Knitting Magazine.
So the way we can offer a value-added Super Bowl preview is to tell you to throw everything those other Super Bowl previews tell you out the window.
Why?
Because it’s 60 minutes of football and anything can happen. That’s part of the fun, of course, but very little of the avalanche of tweets, blogs, vlogs, columns and general opinionating that comes before Sunday’s kickoff between the AFC champion New England Patriots and the NFC champion New York Giants will be an indicator of what will happen in Super Bowl XLVI – that’s 46, for the Roman numeral-challenged – in Indianapolis.
It’s like the stock market. Past performance is not an indicator of future results.
The experts say it will be a battle of superstar quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning and thus an offensive fireworks show. That usually means the first touchdown won’t be scored until there’s, like, three minutes left in the third quarter.
The experts say New England’s defence was ranked second last in the league this season. That usually means the Pats’ secondary will pick off three passes and the D-line will sack Manning four times before the half.
The experts say Brady will pick apart the Giants defence, one hapless cornerback at a time. That usually means Giants sophomore All-Pro defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul will be in Brady’s face all game.
With the Super Bowl set for next weekend in Indianapolis, all eyes will be on the Giants and Patriots, especially the two quarterbacks, New York’s Eli Manning and New England’s Tom Brady.
But a few eyes will be on another quarterback, one who put Indianapolis on the map for more than just the annual 500-mile car race in that town.
Yes, what is to become of Eli’s older brother, Peyton?
Peyton is a Super Bowl champion (XLI, in 2007, over the Chicago Bears), holds numerous college and pro records for passing yards and is a shoo-in for the Football Hall of Fame one day. He’s an 11-time Pro Bowler, a four-time Associated Press NFL MVP and the fastest quarterback to reach 50,000 passing yards, among other accolades.
Those are the metrics of legends.
But everyone’s time comes, and that time may be closer than we think for No. 18 in Indianapolis. After all, the first overall pick in the 1998 draft will be 36 at the end of March and, more ominously, he’s had three surgeries on his neck in the last year and a half, the most recent being a spinal fusion in September. We all hope Peyton recovers, but you have to wonder about life and limb for a guy in his mid-30s whose occupational risks include being pummeled regularly by angry 320-pound linemen.
Without Manning in the line-up all season, the 2011 Colts went a miserable 2-14 and have recently been cleaned house on the coaching front. On the upside, the Colts now own the first pick in the NFL draft in April and will be taking a long look at Stanford stud quarterback Andrew Luck.
Here’s where it gets tricky, though. How do you end Peyton’s decorated time in a Colts uniform in a classy way?
The drama here seems almost designed to allow fans to detach emotionally from Peyton before he is shown the door. According to reports, that is almost certainly going to happen before the draft, especially since Irsay must decide by March 8 whether to give Peyton a $28-million option bonus. Even if Peyton’s best days weren’t behind him and he was in perfect health, writing that kind of cheque would give a sports team owner pause.
It seems the roles have been set for us. Irsay gets painted as the cold-blooded businessman and Peyton the tragic hero who is exiled. We need good guys and bad guys to parse the daily avalanche of information, and the latest developments make it easier to digest.
Who knows? With Luck sporting the horseshoe come next fall, and most certainly one of the other 31 NFL teams willing to take a chance on a surgically repaired Peyton Manning, this may actually be one of those situations that truly does end up win-win.
So we hear the NFL has modified its social media policy to allow players to use Twitter during the upcoming Pro Bowl on Sunday.
If nothing else, the NFL is a stickler for rules, so we know that if it is relaxing its control on something as potentially unpredictable as player tweets, then it means the Pro Bowl must be some kind of boring. It's true. Despite the sunny Hawaiian backdrop, the annual AFC vs NFC all-star game is utterly unengaging. Without the bloodlust and the rivalries, it's like watching a pre-draft combine, or World Cup croquet. Even Ray Lewis must have trouble getting revved up for the Pro Bowl.
Not to worry.
Patriots receiver Chad Ochocinco, who has about 3.1 million followers, tweeted about US Speaker of the House John Boehner the other day, asking why he was looking so glum while sitting behind President Obama during the State of the Union Address.
With Pats quarterback Tom Brady relying heavily on receiver Wes Welker and tight end Rob Gronkowski for his aerial game, Boehner may be wondering why Ochocinco is looking so glum come the Super Bowl on Feb. 5. And Ocho might have the free time to respond, but that would be against the rules.
This is the weirdest sports rumour wildfire in a while. Around 3 pm EST, actor Rob Lowe, he of Young Blood, The West Wing, Wayne's World, Parks & Recreation and more, tweeted the above to his 200K-plus followers.
What happened next was every media outlet and their mom jumped on it like a free cupcake, football speculation frenzy ensues. Apparently Lowe and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay are buddies and Manning sat out the 2011 season thanks to neck problems, but still. USA Today reports it all juuuust might be BS, given that Manning's dad Archie said in an interview, "He ain't retiring. I think he would've told me."
Now if you don't mind I'm going to go see if Gil Bellows has a Twitter account to see what's really happening in the NHL.
This is amazing. And you thought "Whip My Hair" as Neil Young with Bruuuuuuce was good? Here, the Late Night host Jimmy Fallon goes all Ziggy Sportsdust and imagines the Almighty's response to all this Tebow fever. The rookie sensation QB's Denver Broncos take on the New England Patriots this weekend and by the sounds of it, he might be missing his biggest fan...
"Jesus Christ to Tim Tebow/Please leave me alone/Don’t you know my day of rest is Sunday?/And I’m sick of watching all these Broncos games.”
Just in case you find yourself lacking in Tim Tebow-related coverage just this very second, I have come to save you with a few bits that illustrate some of the good, the weird and the ugly of this obsession with the Denver Broncos QB.
Last Saturday, Charles Barkley hosted Saturday Night Live but during a radio interview talking about that gig, the former NBA star and current TNT basketball analyst had some things to say about Mr. Tebow status in the the sports universe. "The national nightmare continues. Hey listen I like Tim Tebow but there comes a point, he had a great game. He's supposed to have a great game. They want to make it seem like oh the world is aligned correct. I'm like he does play quarterback. He is supposed to play well...let's just say the jury is still out on Tebow. He seems like a nice kid but these ups and downs are so different. The jury is still out on Tebow. Just because he had a great game and made four or five great throws (Sunday) doesn't mean he's gonna be a great starting quarterback in the NFL."
Then NFL.com went ahead an imagined what would happen if Tebow and former Republican presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann had a baby. (Spoiler alert! Justin Bieber.) Yeah, so that happened.
Also interesting/insane is all this talk about Tebow's performance on Sunday somehow being touched by God. Yes, the rookie loves him some John 3:16, and yes, he did throw for 316 yards on the way to winning the game, but STILL. One word for anyone who believes in God and thinks that God would care about an NFL football player's performance: Darfur.
(OK, so we ended on kind of a bummer there. Watch this!)
