Dave’s Football Blog

If Super Bowl commercials had not jumped the shark before, they certainly did this year. Even the “good” ads were severely lacking in entertainment value, and the misogynistic streak that ran through this year’s ads was unnecessary and self-defeating.  106.5 million Americans watched this game; at least some of them were bound to be women. Why air an ad that makes your business seem like a comic book store?

What’s more, as the video above shows, this year’s ads used a hell of a lot of gag violence to try and keep people’s interest. A few of those spots were entertaining — the dog collar ad was good for a laugh, and watching Betty White and Abe Vigoda get tackled was funny — but the more you look at this montage of slaps and pratfalls, the more it seems today’s mad men have fewer ideas than Hollywood.

My favorite spot? EA’s ad for Dante’s Inferno, simply because you don’t expect to hear Bill Withers in a video game ad. And I like that song. Well done, EA.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing for the first video.)

We cannot leave this city. Not now.

That’s essentially what NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue told New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Lower 9th Ward and left us with painful images of a shattered Superdome full of desperate people. Benson spent several years prior to Katrina demanding that the city and the state of Louisiana build him a new stadium on their dime. He threatened to move the Saints to another town that would buy him a shiny new stadium.

Lest we forget, even after Hurricane Katrina, Benson fought with the fans, assaulted a cameraman, and flat-out lied to the world about the condition of his facilities in Louisiana. He was itching to ditch Bourbon Street for a richer, sunnier city. Even San Antonio would have been just fine for Benson.

Paul Tagliabue said no. He saw what Katrina did to New Orleans, and he all but ordered the team to stay. He knew the message it would send. If the NFL abandoned New Orleans, then America had abandoned New Orleans. Someone had to be there to stand up for this city and its people. Who better to do that than the man in charge of America’s biggest sporting obsession?

Last night was Paul Tagliabue’s gift to the people of New Orleans and the survivors of Katrina. Decades of heartbreak, frustration and empty promise finally faded into the background. Sean Payton rolled the dice and won. Drew Brees played the game of his life — a game that the leadership in Miami or San Diego didn’t think he could still deliver four years ago. And in one fell swoop, Tracy Porter and his terrible haircuit turned the Super Bowl on its head.

If Paul Tagliabue had not stood up for New Orleans, would we have all lived through this Twitter-smashing moment? Would we be celebrating with a city that was nearly left to die four and half years ago and is still rebuilding today?

In the last four years, the Saints have come to embody the spirit of New Orleans. That spirit might not be there today if it weren’t for the NFL encouraging us to “Be a Saint.” That is Paul Tagliabue’s legacy. His leadership made last night’s celebration possible. With so much talk of the NFL disappearing in 2011, perhaps Tagliabue’s successor would do well to remember the importance of that kind of leadership.

Of course, just as soon as I make some exceedingly inane remark about shiny trophies, we get this monstrosity from the Russian Football Federation. This trophy, which goes to the club who has the best combined finish in the Russian Premier League and its equivalent youth competition, is made of almost 44,000 diamonds and 2.5 kilograms of gold. Yet somehow, it cost only $1 million to make, prompting Kobe Bryant to feel a sudden pang of buyer’s remorse.

And the bald dude in the reflection? He judges. Quietly.

This information comes to us from Yahoo’s brand-spanking new soccer blog Dirty Tackle, a gig that Brooks Peck got because A.) he’s very entertaining, and B.) I’ve been phoning it in for the last 18 months and still don’t have a plan for the future. But pretty much A.

Since I’m still phoning it in, though, here’s some other football-related stuff you should be reading:

• Every possible storyline for Super Bowl XLIV, and then some. [NFL Fanhouse]
• The annual Madden sim has the Saints winning by 10. No word yet on what Tecmo Super Bowl predicts. [Shutdown Corner]
• The Colts’ biggest fan? Jared. Way to go, Indianapolis. [The Sporting Blog, which, by the way, is all over this Super Bowl like white on Zenit St. Petersburg rice.]
• Memo to bakeries: don’t give the icing gun to people who know nothing about football. [Cake Wrecks]
• Anthony Bourdain takes on Miami cuisine. Sort of. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• Jason Whitlock thinks NFL owners are foolish for even considering a lockout. He missed the part where the TV networks have to pay the owners in 2011 whether there’s a season or not, and wealthy men don’t stay wealthy by doing things that make them less money. [Fox Sports]
• Online betting in the USA is still technically illegal. And really sketchy. [Shutdown Corner]
• Drew Brees points out how the NFL is attempting to use the courts to become a single entity, rather than 32 separate teams. Kind of like Major League Soccer, come to think of it. [Washington Post]
• A complete list of soccer podcasts. And there’s a whole hell of a lot of ‘em, too. [EPL Talk]
• Royal Bank of Scotland has apparently had it up to here with Tom Hicks and George Gillett. [The Independent]
• The head of the Confederation of African Football banned Togo from the African Cup of Nations, just weeks after Angolan separatists sprayed machine gun fire at the Togolese team bus, killing 3 people. Here’s why he should resign after such an appalling decision. [Pitch Invasion]
• That whole thing John Terry getting his teammate’s girlfriend pregnant? He was just following John Harkes’ lead. I suspect it’s far less likely that England’s World Cup gets ruined over this. [Dirty Tackle]
• Brian Phillips is working on something awesome. Can’t wait to see it. [The Run of Play]
• Oh, by the way, the NAB Cup begins in a week. Are you ready for some footy? [AFL.com.au]

You might have seen my name pop up on EPL Talk recently — specifically for this piece about the Green & Gold protests at Manchester United. I’ll be contributing a bit more to EPL Talk and its sister site, Champions League Talk, over the next few months. My first piece for Champions League Talk takes a look at why the Champions League Final has become a bigger game than the Super Bowl — although the gap between their average audience figures (109M to 106M) is actually pretty small.

Check out those shiny trophies, though. Who wouldn’t want to leave their fingerprints all over either of those?