Super-sized Super Bowl

If there's one question facing our nation that every American must consider, it is this: why is the Super Bowl so obese?

I say "obese" because 1) the game has become overstuffed with advertising and ceremony and 2) the Super Bowl is really fat.

Take the halftime show, for example. Officially, the halftime show is a mid-game celebration featuring performances by prominent musicians. If you believe this, you are one of the three people who don't watch the game.

Don't get me wrong -- halftime, which is 15 minutes long, does indeed feature prominent musicians. About 80,000 of them. One at a time.

Of course, this works about as well as trying to fit Jerome Bettis into a teacup, which means that the halftime show is probably the best time to take a bathroom break, refill the chip bowl, or check the status of the nuclear reactor. Normally, you could do these things during the commercial break, but during the Super Bowl, missing the commercials is like missing an episode of 24: You'll be permanently out of the loop, and Kiefer Sutherland will hate you.

Indeed, in some small parts of the country -- by which I mean not the Pacific Northwest, Detroit or Pittsburgh -- many people look forward to the commercials more than the game itself.

If you have watched a Super Bowl recently, chances are you remember a Budweiser commercial or two. In fact, if you have watched any football at all in the last millennium or so and have at least the mental capacity of a fish stick, images of the King of Beers will probably start flitting through your head every time the gridiron appears on your TV. This is due to a clever advertising campaign by Anheuser-Busch that uses lots of airtime to send us this very important message about Budweiser beer: "Waaaazzzzzup!"

In fact, Budweiser claims to be the official beer of the Super Bowl, a claim that is hotly contested by Coors.

Coors, if you college students didn't know, makes beer, and, if recent commercials are to be believed, it ships its product in a massive silver bullet train that plows through Super Bowl after Super Bowl, killing everything in its path, while the survivors smile and cheer because they've had enough Coors to mistake a killer train for Jesus.

Confusingly enough, Coors is the official beer of the NFL, but also claims to be the official beer of the Super Bowl. It appears that this advertising war will continue with no clear winner. Except, of course, the NFL and ABC.

Does all this advertising that surrounds the Super Bowl even work? If, at a football game, I want to buy beer, do I go for a nice, cold Bud or a crisp, refreshing Coors? Of course not -- I'm too young to buy beer. I just drink the Milwaukee's Light I smuggled in.

Ultimately, the Super Bowl is about football, pure and simple. I am fed up with the pomp and circumstance. As a responsible and upstanding member of the journalistic community, I pledge never to sell out to the NFL's business machine, because if I miss another episode of 24 I think Kiefer Sutherland will kill me.

With that in mind, thank you for reading this column, the official column of Super Bowl XL and the NFL.