Lambie Watches Superbowl XLV

Yes, it's the one sporting event that captures hundreds of millions of viewers around the globe. The Superbowl is a unique event in many ways. It's perhaps the one television program that people watch so that they can see everything except the main event. No one talks about the preparation of the two teams when the Superbowl's around the corner. They speculate on the ads that we'll see, talk about who's going to be performing the half time show, and refer to it in Roman numerals when writing about it.

The coverage this year was rather unique in that we got the live feed straight from the U.S. without any interruptions from Australian based hosts. The one advantage that this had in years gone by was that they didn't assume that everyone watching knew every fine detail about the game and so spent the time explaining some of the rules that came up. No such luck this year, obviously, so every time some obscure foul was called we were all left to fend for ourselves. No matter, I recorded the game (plus whatever else happened to be recorded during the extra 5 minutes before and 15 minutes after the scheduled broadcast) so I could watch it back in my own time and look up anything that I didn't understand. (Except, of course, that I couldn't be bothered with looking anything up.)

We also had (assuming you were watching the HD broadcast) the pre-game coverage as well, which included a recitation of the Declaration of Independence by people I don't recognise but I assume were past players or members of the armed forces. To be absolutely fair, though, if there's one thing the Superbowl is good at, it's this sort of extravagant spectacle. Each team got their own (what felt like five minute) introduction, and then we could finally get underway. After a trophy was given out, of course. Then we could get finally get underway. After a rendition of "America the Beautiful", of course. And the national anthem.

And here is the true irony of the Superbowl (and indeed all sporting coverage in general). We all know Christina Aguilera sung the wrong lyrics to the national anthem, because it made bigger news than the actual final result of the game did. I couldn't care less because Aguilera delivered one of those arty, impossible-to-sing-along-to renditions that was so painful to sit through that I actually skipped over this part of the broadcast.

And then we could finally get underway. After the coin toss, of course. Which you apparently need a small army of people to do properly: Each new hall-of-fame inductee (only one who actually tossed the coin), the chief referee, and at least four people from each team. And they were all surrounded by camera men and sound engineers from just about every news source on the planet.

After that, we could finally get underway. And yes, this time the game actually started. For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of American Football, it basically consists of a series of set pieces (or occasional improvisation) to drive the ball up the field. You've got four 15 minute quarters split into two 30 minute halves to score or defend depending on who has the ball. Oh, but the clock stops between each play (except in some circumstances I'm not entirely familiar with), so this one hour of total gameplay takes about four hours to get through. This leads to the main criticism a lot of people have with the game, which is that nothing ever happens. I guess it's actually a bit more exciting once you understand most of what's going on.

Of course, all this stop-start play means a lot of ad breaks. And that means a lot of ads. Superbowl ads get more coverage than the damn game itself. People watch the Superbowl purely for the ads. Apparently Superbowl ads have to be absolutely spectacular and cost millions of dollars to make, or be the funniest thing in existence, or both. However, being situated in a country where the ads are meaningless means we don't get to see these SuperAds, unless you visit the Fox Sports website. (When we had the Australian based hosts, they at least showed us some of them during half time.)

Let me give you a heads up, though: don't bother. I had a look at what was on offer and watched maybe, oh, two ads? Maybe three? There wasn't much of anything that seemed to be what you would call a Superbowl ad. What you got instead was a pretty good idea of what's going to be opening in the cinemas over the next few months, because the advertising slots were saturated with movie trailers. Fifteen films were advertised, according to Wikipedia. But who needs that when you've got the internet at your disposal to work out what you might want to watch?

If people aren't watching the Superbowl for the ads, chances are they're probably watching it for the half-time show. Like the ads, there is a mandate that it must be the best thing ever produced and displayed on live television. And this year, the musical group entrusted to do that were.... The Black Eyed Peas. Ever imagine them performing a Superbowl half-time show? I thought not. They did a decent enough job, what with their "futuristic" black and silver costumes and dancers that glowed in the dark. Like the ads this year, there was nothing special about it, so I ended up skipping most of it.

Slash did make an appearance at one point during the performance, performing "Sweet Child o' Mine" with Fergie. Except it wasn't so much of a performance as what felt like a one-minute cameo. What a waste. I'm pretty sure Usher got more time on stage later on performing one of his songs than Slash did.

Once they'd finished doing their thing, and the hosts had all finished doing their half-time analysis (which I skipped over - are you noticing a trend here?) the second half got underway. I nearly skipped over it, too, but I'm glad I didn't. If I had, I would have missed seeing a camera man getting flattened on the sideline by a player who couldn't slow down.

Eventually, the Green Bay Packers won 31-25 with about 30 seconds to spare, because somehow you don't have to run down the clock completely in this game in order for it to end. So the end-game celebrations began, with all the spectacle you would expect from the Superbowl.

And then my recording ran out four minutes later.