Friday, January 30, 2009

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL...OR "-MERCIALS"?




Will you be watching the Super Bowl, or it’s half-time show, or it’s “-mercials”?
It’s gonna be in Tampa, Fla.
...between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals.
I had to look up who the coaches are: Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin (the youngest coach to the Super bowl, age 36) & Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt…I typically follow SEC college football more closely (Go Dawgs!...that was for Wally and LisaB)…the pro teams often bring some heavy-duty bad press to the eyes and ears, so they don’t intrigue me as much as the youth of college ball.

As usual, the teams’ state governors or city mayors get their names in the news by having “non-monetary” wagers released to the press around this time: If the Steelers win…Glendale must plant a native tree of Pennsylvania outside University of Phoenix Stadium, home of the Arizona Cardinals. If the Cardinals win… a cactus must be planted outside of Heinz Field, where the Steelers play. (I’m not sure either one will SURVIVE the environment of each city seeing how environmentally different these climates are…and how could that be good for said “trees”?)

Half-time is the “reason to watch” for some people…and this year they may get a pretty high-level of “watching and listening”....if you’re an “older rocker”…(don’t confuse this with the noun-form of the word, yet a lot of us probably feel the draw to sit in a rocker while watching)…we’ll be tapping our feet or moving to the beat of "BRUCE" and the E Street Band.

But halftimes are not the main reason I watch…I watch for the commercials … Yes, “waiting-to-see-the-best commercials”… Several “money-making ads” leave me wondering “what was that all about?”, some are emotional and capture my heart (who can forget the kid “winning” the jersey after he shared a soda)…then there are many involving animals in very unique ways (crows watching as humans run into glass doors, dogs retrieving alcoholic beverages from the fridge, and even polar bears sliding down hills with carbonated beverages). I find the animal-themed ones capture my attention.

My intrigue with the “mercialsisn’t a lonely place…I find a lot of our youth teens fall into said commercial wonderment…I watch “them watch”…Their spontaneity delivers better tag lines than the commercials themselves—you often hear them shushing those around to be sure not to miss a single line. Our Super Bowl get-togethers for our youth are well attended, well chaperoned…and don’t worry, we roll out the vacuums after half-time and send them home…so they’re able to make it home to bed early and no failing to make late-night driving curfews.

So, think of me Sunday evening as we eat, share time together and watch the “mercials”… Oh, yeah, I do have to put my 2cents in for the Cardinals to win, jus' cause I have some blogger friends from Arizona (shout out to a particular minister and his beautiful wife)…and they’ve never been in the Super Bowl.

To quote “Monday Night Football’s singer-of-the-past, Hank Williams, Jr., “Are You Ready for Some Football….or "mercials"…as the case may be?
Who are you pulling for?