MITCH BLATT

The Super Bowl Village was fully packed to skin-on-skin capacity Friday night as LMFAO took the stage at a street that was probably too narrow for the band’s popularity. Parents were frantically trying to get their children out of the crowd before the concert started. Pushing began as the concert started, and there was nowhere to go. Many people ended up finding their way to the alleyway to get out of the madness. Elsewhere, ardent evangelicals thought the drinking and debauchery emphasized the importance of spreading their message at the Super Bowl. Some pictures from Friday night:

(They were taken with an iPhone, so the quality is lacking.)

People everywhere at LMFAO concert:

For an overhead shot of the concert crowd, check out WTHR.

SCOTT JACOBS

Well, here we are.  On Sunday the Steelers and Packers clash in Dallas (North Texas?) for the NFL’s ultimate prize: the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl 45. Both teams are established NFL powerhouses with the Steelers looking for their 7th Super Bowl title, and the Packers looking to win their 4th.

We asked our panel of brilliant football minds to forecast the Super Bowl for our beloved readers, and this is what they had to say.  Enjoy the game on Sunday, cause after this, there’s no football for  awhile (emphasis on the “h”).

Mitch Blatt

The Pick: Packers 21  Steelers 17
MVP: Aaron Rodgers

Aaron Rodgers is focused and ready to ascend to the level of the NFL’s elite.  The Packers have been getting by in close games, but Rodgers will drive down the field at the end and end the Steelers dynasty era.  The video of Roethlisberger “boozing at Texas Piano Bar” (as TMZ titled it) will be replayed on ESPN over and over to shame him.

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Scott Jacobs

The Pick: Packers 24  Steelers 13
MVP: Clay Matthews

Considering this is the last game for awhile and the fact that we’ve had some pretty damn good Super Bowls recently, I’m pulling for a good game.  But I just don’t see it this year.  This game feels just like Super Bowl XL, between Seattle and these very Steelers: it just feels, well, uninspired.  Both teams deserve to be here, don’t get me wrong, but neither team wows me.  I’m going with Green Bay because I think they’re this year’s team of destiny.  Aaron Rodgers will have a big game in his first Big Game and crazy Clay Matthews is going to wreck havoc on Pittsburgh’s offensive line.  Big Ben has an average game as Title-Town gets their first parade since 1997.

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Jim Rubera

The Pick: Steelers 27  Packers 24
MVP: Ben Roethlisberger

I’m not sure why Green Bay is favored. Everybody thinks that the Steelers can’t score with them, but if you look at their two playoff games they’ve scored 31 and 24 against the Ravens and Jets, two elite defenses.  The bottom line is that the Steelers have a better coach, a better big game QB, a better defense that includes the best defensive player in the league, and the most feared defensive player in the league.  They have basically an entire team who has been to the dance and won before.  Rodgers will need to throw up numbers like he did against Atlanta to make this happen and I just don’t see it shaking out like that in his first Super Bowl against this veteran defense.

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Mike Kaye

The Pick: Packers 20  Steelers 13
MVP: Charles Woodson

I see this as being a 10-0 game in favor of the Steelers at half-time, but I think that the Black and Yellow’s tendency to keep other teams in games will hurt them when it counts the most.  The Packers will cause at least two second half turnovers with Charles Woodson causing one for a score.  Clay Matthews will have a huge game, but it will not show up on the stat sheet.  Mike Wallace is the Steelers only real hope on offense.

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Carrington Harrison

The Pick: Steelers 27  Packers 20
MVP: Ben Roethlisberger

Ben Rothliesberger’s last three playoff games he has made the play to win. From the pass to Santonio Holmes in the back of the endzone, the 3rd and 19 pass against Baltimore and the nail in the coffin 3rd down pass vs. the Jets in the AFC Championship game. Some people have that winning gene, the ability to rise to the occasion when called upon. This is Ben’s championship moment, his opportunity to cement his Hall of Fame credentials. Seize the moment, Big Ben.

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Brad Clark

The Pick: Packers 28  Steelers 24
MVP: Aaron Rodgers

Green Bay forces turnovers and Rodgers exposes Pittsburgh’s DB’s, throwing for 2 TD’s and runs another in. Tramon Williams takes a Roethlisberger INT to the house. The GB Defense does enough to hang on late in a nail biter.

Graphic: Scott Jacobs

Will it affect him in the Super Bowl? No. But your reputation, precedes you, buddy. How much money do you think this two- possibly-three- time Super Bowl winner is leaving on the table in endorsements by being accused of rape, crashing his motorcycle with no helmet and generally acting like a fill in the blank? There aren’t many 2+ time winning Super Bowl QBs out there, so they really should take advantage of being above average at their position and playing for a great franchise, but I guess Mr. Roethlisberger is busy “taking advantage” of other stuff.

DAN KARELL

After a great career at Indiana University, Tracy Porter was drafted in the second round (40th overall) of the 2008 draft by the New Orleans Saints.

Before he was picked, Saints coach Sean Payton called Porter to let him know they were going to draft him. Said Porter, “it was the happiest day of my life.”

And last night, the Port Allen, Louisiana native etched his name in his hometown Saints lore, with a 74 yard interception return to give the Gold and Black their first ever Super Bowl championship.

Porter finished with four tackles, a pass deflection, and the interception that “Who Dat Nation” will be talking about for a long time.

Adding a twist to this, is that Porter did this against the Indianapolis Colts, the team from just an hour north of where he spent four years of his life improving his game, so that one day, he could maybe play for his boyhood team, the New Orleans Saints.

And adding to that twist, was the play of Courtney Roby, an Indianapolis native, whose kick returns helped give the Saints good field position, and his special teams play held the Colts deep in their own territory after downing a punt.

Roby returned four kicks for 102 yards, with a long of 34 yards.

Roby also played four years for the Hoosiers at Indiana University, finishing his career there with the most receptions (170) and receiving yards (2524) in school history.

Roby was then picked in the third round, 68th overall by the Tennessee Titans in the 2005 NFL Draft.

He then bounced around between the Titans, Cincinnati Bengals, and even his hometown Indianapolis Colts, before signing with the New Orleans Saints on October 16, 2008.

Porter’s journey to the NFL wasn’t filled with as many accolades.

He didn’t start playing high school football till his junior season in high school, which scared off college coaches from taking a chance on the late bloomer.

But former Indiana coach Gerry DiNardo saw some potential that no one else saw, leading to the recruiting site Rivals.com to give Porter a zero star rating.

Porter responded to his critics, playing in his first game as a true freshman in 2004, and finishing with four pass breakups, a solo tackle, and two interceptions — the second one he returned for 96 yards and the score.

After four years with the Hoosiers and helping them bring the “Old Oaken Bucket” back to Bloomington, as well as returning them to their first Bowl game (The 2007 Insight.com Bowl vs. Oklahoma State) since 1993, Porter was ready for the next level.

Once he was drafted by the Saints, he played the first five games of the season, before going down for the season with a wrist injury that landed him on injury reserve.

And now, in his sophomore season, the injury bug struck again, causing him to miss four weeks on the sidelines with a sprained MCL in his left knee, although he wasn’t out for the season.

Porter returned to the field in Week 15, and his big performances in the last two rounds of the playoffs have given the New Orleans Saints their first Super Bowl championship in 43 years of existence in the NFL.

Photo: Reuters

MITCH BLATT

I cover sports business for JSB, as well as writing general posts, so I figure I should tackle the Super Bowl ads: not just which ones were funniest but which ones did the best job of marketing their products.

However, we will start off with which ones are funniest.

The envelope please…

1.) Brett Favre in 2020 – Hyundai

Not only was it hilarious imagining what Brett Favre will look like 10 years from now when he’s still playing the game, this ad actually related directly to the product it promoted and, I think, connected with the audience. (From thinking about Favre’s 10-year future, the ad transitioned from that uncertainty to the certainty that your Hyundai will still be under warranty. That’s the challenge of Super Bowl ads: They have to entertain the fans while still selling a product. Talking about product features isn’t entertaining.

2.) Green Police – Audi

Also hilarious, and also relates directly to the product, and a good song, too!

Here are some related videos on the Green Police theme from Audi:

Green Police YouTube Channel

3.) Charles Barkley doing Dr. Suess about Taco Bell

Charles Barkley is awesome even without rhyming about Taco Bell. Remember what a star he was in his 2008 T-Mobile Super Bowl ad with Dwyane Wade?

4.) Fiddling Beaver – Monster

Monster has had good ads for the past two years now:

5.) Mr. Burns goes broke – Coke

I thought it would be funny if Abu just gave Burns a Coke and left. Yay, you can be happy just by drinking Coke, not by having good friends!

Now for some other notable ads…

Best marketing campaigns

The best marketing campaign by far this year was Focus on the Family. They announced they were running an abortion-related ad featuring Tim Tebow, and they generated all sorts of controversy for running an advocacy ad during the Super Bowl. As it was, the ad itself simply showed Tebow’s mother sharing her love for Tim (and didn’t mention abortion at all) and told viewers to go to their website for the full story. In effect, they got a whole lot of free publicity to push a message that CBS wouldn’t have allowed to run during the Super Bowl in the first place.

Go Daddy has the best on going marketing campaign, and they continued the same thing this year. They get a good share of (well-deserved) criticism for objectifying women, but when I bought the domain name for Juiced Sports Blog, there was only one registrar I thought of: Go Daddy. Who else is there? There’s a reason Go Daddy dominates the domain name game with 29% of the market share. (Their leading competitor has 8% of the market share.) Go Daddy took a boring product–domain names–and made people talk about it. Not everyone is going to buy a domain name, but with the growth of the internet over the past decade, people already had Go Daddy’s name in their head from the Super Bowl, so when they did decide to buy a domain name, they already knew who sold them.

Weirdest ads

Census ad

It’s not every year that the federal government buys a Super Bowl ad. It was kind of a slow ad without much of a climax. I was disappointed.

There’s a lot of related ads on their YouTube channel like this one:

The commercial is supposed to be a mockumentary, and it includes “interviews” with the characters on YouTube. It’s directed by Christopher Guest, one of the writers of This is Spinal Tap.

Dove for Men

Dove is trying to expand its market to include men. We’ll see how it works:

The target audience for this campaign is older men who are done raising their kids, so I think they might be able to get some of the market. Obviously they’re not going to get any of the market of young men.

Mark Sanchez ad evokes FotF ad?

When this Mark Sanchez ad came on, it grabbed my attention at first, because it sounded like it could be a response to the controversy generated by the Tim Tebow ad. Listen to the first lines (which were said as the sound of a heartbeat was playing): “I’m Mark Sanchez, and I’ve got something to say to women…” (It ended up being an awareness ad of heart attack symptoms.)

On a sidenote, is Mark Sanchez becoming the pretty boy Tom Brady was?

Dr. Pepper KISS ad flop

Dr. Pepper did a really lame ad that wasn’t even much of a change from their regular non-Super Bowl ad rotations featuring Gene Simmons telling people to drink Dr. Pepper, because “he’s a doctor.”

Come on, you’ve got KISS, a band that is older than Brett Favre, and you’ve got The Who doing the halftime show. Dr. Pepper should have used KISS to joke about how old guys always do the halftime show now

Denny’s Only Day of Business All Year

Last year Denny’s gave away free grand slams the day after the Super Bowl, and lots of people went, but I’m not sure anyone returned. Not having improved their food, I’m not sure how they think this year will be any different. One difference is this year Free Grand Slam Day is Tuesday, not Monday, so maybe they were hoping a lot of people would come today, thinking the food was free, then end up actually buying food.

The ad is entertaining, if only to see a chicken sitting in the Oval Office wearing a tie:

VW Fails in Bringing Back 10-Year-Old Trend

Remember when you were 10 years old and you thought it was funny to hit people when you saw a VW Beatle? Well it’s still not funny:

That’s $2.8 million dollar the drain…

MITCH BLATT

The Conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family bought some spots to run abortion-related ads during the Super Bowl, eliciting outrage from liberal groups including National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.

Ty Duffy at The Big Lead said CBS shouldn’t air them then got into an argument with me in the comments section of my post about the ads. Gloria Allred threatened to sue CBS.

Well, now the first of the FoF ads has been shown during the pregame show.

Tell me how offended you are after watching this:

And here’s the one that ran during the Super Bowl game:

So offensive!

Meanwhile, this is GoDaddy’s ad.

Which is not offensive at all to feminists:

PAT SUMMIT
Head Coach Pat Summit and her Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team defeated Stanford University last Tuesday night 64-48 to win the women’s NCAA Championship game for the second consecutive season. Summit, 55, a 7-time NCAA Coach of the Year, won her 8th championship as the Lady Vols leader and she closed to within 2 crowns of tying legendary UCLA Coach John Wooden for the most all-time among college coaches. Nevertheless, despite her accolades, lack of visible tattoos and race, I bet Don Imus would still consider her a “nappy-headed ho.”

JOHN CALIPARI
Memphis Head Coach John Calipari will rue his decision to not utilize his final timeout in last week’s NCAA Men’s Championship game until the day that he meets his maker. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

LEBRON JAMES
Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics and Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets were all tremendous this season and the entire trio deserves credit for the enormous impact that they had on their respective teams in the 2007/2008 campaign. Nevertheless, as Bill Parcells is known to say, “the numbers don’t lie.” Cleveland Cavaliers superstar Lebron James, 23, recorded statistics this year that were otherworldly (30.0 points, 7.9 rebounds, 7.2 assists) and if he doesn’t win the award it’s an injustice to both himself and to the league. Without King James, the Cavaliers would have been hard-pressed to win more than 10 games this season and I for one believe that they could have lost to Michael J Fox’s squad in Teen Wolf.

KOBE BRYANT
Still, when sentimentality and politics play their roles. look for Bryant to win his first lifetime achievement award (MVP) when the votes are collected.

KYLE FARNSWORTH
When having their name called on the public address system at Yankee Stadium, every Bomber is introduced with their chosen music blaring in the background. For example, legendary closer Mariano Rivera exits the bullpen with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” clamoring and Big Apple favorite Paul O’Neill greeted the Bronx faithful with the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” resounding throughout the stadium. With that in mind, I think reliever Kyle Farnsworth’s ideal anthem would be Pink Floyd’s “Goodbye Cruel World.” Unfortunately, I do not believe that Farnsworth needs to be kept astray from sharp objects. But, if Manager Joe Girardi continues to allow him to cripple the Yankees with his unseemly debacles late in games, I may put myself at personal risk.

CHIEN-MING WANG
Yankees ACE Chien-Ming Wang was desecrated last year by critics for his putrid performances against the Cleveland Indians in the ALCS (0-2, 19.06 ERA). Those same critics who bashed Wang, 28, conveniently dismiss the fact that he has won more games (49-18, 3.64 ERA) since the middle of the 2005 season than any other starting pitcher in Major League Baseball. Wang absolutely was subpar at a very inopportune time for himself and the Yankees. But, Wang’s futility was not an ongoing A-Rod-like post-season demise. Wang simply had two bad outings. The Taiwanese import is one the best pitchers in the sport and, with the possible exception of Mets lefty Johan Santana, there is nobody I’d trust more to take the mound in October.

JIMMY LEYLAND
Despite their anemic 2-11 start, I still predict that Detroit Tigers Manager Jimmy Leyland will enjoy many a victory smoke when it’s all said and complete.

ERIC CARTMAN AND BELICHICK
Last week on an episode of South Park, the portly, foul-mouthed caricature Eric Cartman revealed the true reason that the heavily-favored New England Patriots faltered against the New York Giants 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII.

“Just before the last Super Bowl, Bill Belichick gathered his football players and said let’s win this one for real… Just this one time.. Let’s not cheat. You know what happened? They lost. Even if you feel all eyes are on you, you can’t give up on cheating!” — 4.9.08, Cartman, South Park.

Any way you portray it, South Park’s resident fat-boy provided some of the great investigative journalism our nation has seen since Woodward and Bernstein uncovered Watergate with the help of the enigmatic “Deep-Throat.” Now, nearly 3-months-later, the outcome of the game makes entire sense.

Agree or disagree with my vantages, I hope I was able to entertain. Thanks for your readership.