The Press Box - The Super Bowl LV Reaction Pod

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker react to Super Bowl LV. They weigh in on Tony Romo's performance as an announcer, discuss the best and worst commercials, and offer thoughts on the pregame segment. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, immediate consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here. This is your Super Bowl 55 instant reaction edition of the press box. Final score, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31, Kansas City Chiefs 9. And David, what else is there to say? Is this Apex Mountain for the old guys still got it? Oh my gosh. The old guys definitely still got it. Not only did the old guy still got it in the closing score.

We had a commercial featuring John Travolta dancing in which they, I believe the script said he still got it. This is the old guy still got it night of our lives. Absolutely. And the next week of coverage will be Tom Brady is immortal. Tom Brady is a model for 40 somethings everywhere. And I think only because the game had a little fake tension in the fourth quarter, did we not get more of the loving sideline shots of Tom Brady?

It's not like the game undercover Tom Brady. I'm not going to say that. But I think if the game had just been a smidge far, the score had been a smidge bigger, smidge more lopsided. We would have gotten even more the old guy still got at love in the fourth quarter there. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to train the camera away from Mahomes on offense.

You know, I mean, he's made us believe that anything's possible over the past couple years. and and you know, so kudos to him and this was a real crappy game for that team. But yeah, you're right. I mean, Tom Brady's such a weird figure in sports and that it sort of simultaneously feels like we can't possibly say enough about him

and at the same time that like the hagiographies have already been written for so many years that it's exhausting, right? I mean, like, and I feel like I went back and forth to the different polls throughout the course of this game several times. And let me tell you the way you square those two things. You come on sports radio like 6 a.m. tomorrow and you go, what is there left to say? I mean, what is there left to say? What can you say about the guy?

Doing the hagiography and also acknowledging that you just don't have anything to add at this point. That's a magic sports radio trick. Two big topics for us tonight. I'm going to let you choose what we do first. The announcers and the commercials. Where should we go first? Let's do the announcers. Okay.

one second before we do that just formally oh oh my gosh yeah all right david has cracked open a beer not my first of the nights oh it's gonna be a good one so a very tough draw of a super bowl for cbs not only are you dealing with the stuff we've been talking about all year with a smaller than usual crowd there in tampa tonight you get a game that's not very close kansas city scored three points in the second half and they were on their opening drive. So Jim Nance and Tony Romo had to work a little bit extra tonight. What did you think of their performance? I thought they did a great job.

And I can, you know, my wife is not an avid football viewer. And she came out and I was just like, I already got to do a podcast. What are your notes on the announce team? And she's like, I love Tony Romo. I don't think she would have known who Tony Romo was coming into this game. She's like, no, I just like the way he does it. It feels different. I was like, yep, that's Tony Romo.

I thought they did a good job. I mean, listen, the kind of synchronicity, the chemistry between the two people in the announce booth sometimes is overrated, right? Or at least over-discussed in forums like this. But on a night like tonight, it's great to have two people that just have a really easy chemistry and can, and easy is the way that Nancy and Romo have made it feel since day one, right? not just about them, but both of their styles sort of skew in that direction. And they did a pretty good job of keeping things moving, if not, you know, even if the game

wasn't terribly interesting. Can I give you one theory, which is that Tony Romo, who's been pretty beloved through four seasons of broadcasting, started to get a little bit of pushback this year, mostly along the lines of, hey, Tony Romo, I know you're excited to do this game. I know you're really, really excited, but your excitement, which felt so different and natural in years one, two, and three is starting to just wear on us a little bit. Can you take it down like 10%, 20%? I almost felt he came out in this game tonight super mellow and Nance was the one who was kind of amped up. Yeah.

I don't know if you notice this, but the very first kick return of the game, Tampa Returner takes it for like 23 yards. It was a totally pedestrian. and Nance is like, he cuts up the middle. And he's tackled. It felt like Nance was in the Romo job and Romo was like, was super mellow. And I don't know if you watch the very interesting hour of television called Tony goes to the Super Bowl during the pregame show. I miss that.

But he said it like he was in a trance in that. He's just looking at the camera going, what is greatness really mean? I'm going to ask Russell Wilson. I mean, it was like, what? Oh, Tony. Are you just, did you just get a massage or something? Like what's going on here, bud? He just seemed really, really relaxed.

But I don't know. He felt that way. And then I felt like about 10, 15 minutes. And he got in. And you're right. Their chemistry is fantastic. Yeah. I mean, I could, I could, you know, run through my note sheet here.

I think my favorite part of the Nance performance was that it felt like he, he got in all of his notebook dump at the end, not just not really information, but the catch. he had been workshopping. He just sort of like threw a bunch of stuff at the wall in the last minute and a half of the game, you know, uh, again, the chiefs were demanding our sort of attention and respect until very, very late in the, in the fourth quarter. Um, and so Nan sort of had had to cram a bunch of stuff. Um, but, you know, I think overall, uh, it was a really strong performance by them. I think that, you know, maybe it's because we, grew up, I mean, not grew up.

We were of age when Tony Romo took over the Cowboys. We rooted for him. We watched him play. This is his second career. It does feel like he's a little bit more of a contemporary to us than, you know, some of the, when we started watching football, the people who were calling the games were living legends, you know? And there's something about the Nance Romo duo that feels a little bit, it doesn't feel quite as like star-studded, even though they're both the very best at what they do.

But that sort of contributes to the ease, I think. I mean, the sort of comfort you feel listening to them. You know, it's not, Nance does not have, Nance has definitely has like a traditional announcer voice, but there's, but the delivery is a lot more kind of, I don't know, grandfatherly or something. I mean, and, and Tony Romo, you know, obviously is, he's like, like, you know, my wife says, like when I have a couple of beers,

I get a lot more southern. Tony Romo just sort of like gets increasingly southern somehow, as the game goes on. You know, he's, like, he's, like he's,

the deeper he kind of gets into football trance, the more it's just like, it really is just like a high school coach out there, just identifying plays. Yeah, Nance is really leaning into elder statesman. Mm-hmm. That is the key where he likes to live.

Yeah. Absolutely. If it feels, if they feel a little, I don't know, a little more tangible than the announces of our youth, I would say two things. One is that the world,

is smaller, right? The networks are smaller. Everything has been downsized from the 80s monoculture that we grew up in. Number two and more poignantly, David, Tony Romo is younger than the two of us. How does that make you feel? I mean, yeah, so, you know, yeah, he didn't seem like this larger than life figure because we're older than him. Exactly. I didn't want to put that out on Front Street for everybody at the time, but you're absolutely right. And, and, and, Yeah, I mean, he definitely has a sort of grit, as the word of the word of last year, a sort of gravitas. He's a character, you know, and he's a, it's weird because as a player,

he seemed a little bit like the anti-quarterback, you know, he was every, he was sort of, well, I mean, given that he's also a quarterback and, you know, a white dude and everything else. He seemed about as far away from Troy Aikman as you could get. Right. Oh, yes. And and yet he is you know, on the mic, he is like sometimes it feels like

he's straight out of Friday night lights. You know, I mean, there's something very football and something and sort of very unique about him at the same time. Very drawed up in the dirt, both as a quarterback and then as an announcer. I'm making this up as I go along. Yeah. They had a few funny moments I wrote down. Nance was

talking about how Tom Brady was the first player to come into the stadium today and Connie said he was gazing around the stadium. And then Tony responds, I can see you were gazing at him too while he was gazing. Really well done by the gazers. And then it goes back to Nancy. He goes, easy. Yeah. I don't know where he thought that whole rip was going.

Was it a geysers joke? Was it, I don't know. There was a lot later. I think they also pointed out or, I mean, Romo went out of his way to point out that this the 100th Tom Brady game that Jim Nance called in his career, which is just kind of, kind of stunning, right? I mean, not just like, I don't know. I mean, if you said this was the hundredth game that Tom Brady played on CBS, I guess Nance probably called most of him, but that would still be really shocking, right? I mean, it's, it's, that's just surprising.

One thing I also like about Roma that makes him different than the other network guys is there's a little ringer podcaster in him. Like, when the Bucks went down and scored a touchdown on their last drive of the first half, which made the score, correct me if I'm wrong here, 21 to 6, I think. Tony Romo basically said that could be a Super Bowl winning drive right there. He was willing to jump ahead. That's the thing is he's not just predicting plays. He's actually doing this kind of analysis like, you know what? They might have just clinched the game right there, which by the way they did as it turned out.

And that's not the kind of analysis. I don't think you would hear from Troy Aikman or Chris Collinsworth. if they just, their mind wouldn't work like that. Yeah. He's happy to do it. Another one was when it became clear that the bucks were going to win the Super Bowl. And he said, see, this is going to give Brady seven Super Bowl titles to Patrick Mahomes's one Super Bowl title. And if it had been six to two, he could have caught him maybe, but seven to one is tough to catch.

That's like something straight out of Bill's pop. That's not something normal announcers are talking about. And I like it. to me that's interesting. That is something interesting to talk about in that moment. It is. It is. I mean, you make the observation on some level and you got to push the bit, right? I mean, you got to make it, you got to sort of make it a more clickable idea. And he did that on the fly. It's pretty good work there. If I have any notes for the CBS Romo crew, and I've said this to you before, but it's this. I don't think they do a fantastic job explaining the storyline of the game.

to dumb people like us. Like there was something tonight that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were doing with their defense that just completely shut down one of the greatest offenses we've ever seen. Yeah. Part of it was Kansas City's problem with the offensive line. Part of it was the safeties, the two deep safeties at Romo referred to. He did a little of that in the fourth quarter. If this had been Chris Collinsworth and Freddie Goodellie and that NBC crew,

they would have been showing closeups of those two safeties over and over again. they would have showed you close-ups of those Tampa Bay defensive ends running right around those bad tackles for Kansas City, right? They would have personalized it and been like, here's what's happening. I agree. It's happening again. And Romo is really good to explain football, but his crew just doesn't put him in that position. So you're kind of watching the game, and I know I'm, I know you and I are about the same level of football. And I'm kind of like, what's happening again?

Yeah. why is team A doing this to team B? Well, they talked about how, you know, Kansas City's line sort of, offensive line sort of, you know, was in shambles. But they didn't really get to that until the third quarter or something. And that's when it was, you know, maybe more so obvious they had to say something. But I agree with you. I feel like we, you and I've had these kind of conversations, you know, off the podcast.

But, you know, the announcers, the networks, I think, are tempted to sort of dumb it down a little bit for the Super Bowl, right? They know they're kind of shooting at a much broader audience than normal, but I think if that's the case, or even if it's not, what they're missing is you don't ignore the X's and O's to make things more accessible. You just tell it in a way that it's accessible, right? I mean, they should have been, they should have been showing you JPP's face, like, as big as the screen, and then, you know, like, explain his, like, like 40 speed and then do that for everybody who's like running after pat mahomes right to like personalize all these people who are terrorizing the the chief's offense and don't be afraid to be like there are

five people five gigantic dudes standing in front of patrick mahomes who are who are supposed to protect him and instead are a threat to his life right now because they're just they're just olling people as they as they as they sprint towards the most valuable man in sports exactly And that's not X's and O's. That's show me what football man is doing to other football man. Yeah, exactly. Right? And what it would be again, come out of a commercial.

And again, this is a Sunday night football mainstay. Come out of a commercial, have a set piece ready to go, three replays in a row. And you show me why that offensive tackle can't block that outside linebacker, whether it's JPP or Shack Barrett, whoever it is. And you show it to me until I understand it, me being dumb football person. Yeah. You don't use terms like cover two. You don't use all that stuff. Just show me why he.

is beating the other guy. Yeah. And it tells a great story. And it's funny when Tony and Jim did their first Super Bowl, that was that same kind of, remember that was the Patriots Ram Super Bowl where there was no scoring? And I thought the same thing. I was like, show me Aaron Donald. Show me how he's just wreck and shop right now with the Patriots offensive line.

Right. Just show me personalize it to him. That's note number one. Note number two, and this is not Tony Rambo's fault, but we've had some people in the sports media industrial complex saying he's better than John Madd. And you know what I think about that comparison. This early in Tony Romo's career, if there had been a Super Bowl like this, and there were many in John Madden's career, you know what he would have done during that fourth quarter when it wasn't a very entertaining game? He would

have taken it as his responsibility to entertain the audience. He would have been like, okay, football game, whatever. I got to do this. I got to carry this. Yep. I got to be like a late night host right now. I don't have to do stupid jokes. I don't have to get out of the football game. I need to honor the game, but I need to carry this thing right now. I agree. Tony Romo, whether he can do that or not, I don't know, but he clearly doesn't think in those terms right now. He's like, I'm analyzing the football game. I'm still here. I haven't gone to this other level and say, you know what, I just need to be, I just need to be funny right now, right? I need a. I think part of what makes Romo, and we kind of got it this earlier, but I think part of what makes Romo so good and so

effective is he's sort of deferential to Nance, right? I mean, he's so like he's, he is, he is, Romo more than anything is intent on making that relationship work and Nance reciprocates, obviously. There's not, I'm not trying to insinuate anything, but Madden was a different thing. I mean, Madden did exactly what he wanted to do at any given time, regardless of what Pat Summerall was doing in the chair next room. Now, Pat Summerall was a, you know, a football, a football robot who would just like get in there and you turn the crank and he would like call the the the the the down yardage like automatically and boom his voice over whatever else was going on and all madden had to do was sort of just like step around him in those moments but

it's it's a it's a different relationship you're right i mean you're right though i mean the fourth quarter in most in this it's not specific to romo obviously it's everybody else it's it the the fourth quarter for probably the past 10 Super Bowls is, I mean, it's so easy for it to fall into sort of a malaise where we're just like, you know, trying to buy time between commercials. Yes. And look, there may be no sports announcer on television, at least in football, that can just choose scenery and just really do it and sort of just, you know, wow an audience like that. That may just not be possible. I'm just saying, if we're doing power rankings and you were trying to put Romo in some level,

just remember that. That is a superpower John Madden hat. And it was an incredible superpower. We should do commercials next. I assume, but before we get away from the announced team, I just want to this is not a knock on CBS

per se, but this is more of a general question, not specific to tonight. Why in a football game do we go back to the halftime show roundtable after the game for three seconds? I know. What is that? Why do we have to go back and be like at every single time, no matter what channel it's on? It's just like, hey, coach, what do you think about that? I mean, there was some technical glitches tonight. But set that aside. If they're worded, hey, coach, what do you think about the game? Well, I think we're really going to see. This really means a lot for Tom Brady's legacy. And we're going to really find out a lot about what Patrick Mahomes is when he, to see how he comes back next. And before they finish talking, like the credits are running over their face. And like, nope, I would much rather see an eagle flying across.

the sky. Then you hear like 15 seconds of nonsense from from one or two people on the panel. Like let them go home. Like let you know or whatever. I mean, let them do something besides this. Find a job for. At least let them even on football Sunday. It's like the post game stuff. It's totally it's just totally worthless. And they did it a half time too. Yep. They did everybody do three seconds before we go to the weekend. And I'm like, what if we just downsize? Okay. We need we need a bunch of guys for the four hour plus pregame show. But halftime, how about we have James Brown and Nate Burleson?

Yeah. And or just James Brown and Boomer's Heison. You pick whoever you want. And he has like one, you know, cogent, 45 second minute long thing over some highlights. That's it. I completely agree. It feels very, very perfunctory to do that. All right, David, let's do some commercials.

I texted you during the game. Yeah. And I said, am I imagining this? Are there like 35, 40% more commercials featuring stars this year? Has the like dancing animal versus actual TV movie star ratio changed in 2021? What do you think about that? Well, it's funny because all of those, I mean, the thing that struck me before I realized how many stars there were was how CGI and all the stars were.

Like everything, we kept seeing those Paramount Plus ads where they had all the like, you know, the representative kind of the tent pulls. the living tent poles of the various, you know, properties that were all hiking up a mountain together. And it was like so clear that they were just each, you know, they each like were sent like a green screen at home. And, you know, and they filmed their part solo or whatever. And they, and they taped them all together on some computer somewhere. But that was like every commercial. And that's the product of what we're, the age that we're living in, right?

I mean, we've all read the endless stream of like Hollywood Reporter articles about how impossible things are to film now. And it's not, I mean, and just as a practicality, even if there's not. legality behind it, right? I mean, and as I was watching all these stars, I was thinking, oh, they're finding, like every ad company is having to find, ad agency is having to find different ways to put a star in a commercial without actually having the star leave their living room. You know, I mean, it's like, it's this weird game of limbo. But, but there were way more stars. And when you think about it, like a CGI Clydesdale is much more workable, you know, from a, from a computer terminal than, you know, Matthew McConaughey. So it is really,

really bizarre that that's the that's the direction they chose they could have done a lot of a lot of different things but i guess at the end of the day you know a lot of these stars aren't too busy right now maybe maybe they're they're reaching out maybe they're more interested maybe they're more affordable and also this is the way we've been steering for a long time i mean it's way like like you and i will make a joke about a you know jason alexander hoodie in two years And we will not have, we will not remember a single, you know, CGI frog from a beer commercial in, you know, three days later. I hope I'm not making a Jason Alexander hoodie joke. That was kind of funny, by the way.

Yeah. But I hope I'm not making that joke in two years, three years. And you have my permission to call the authorities if I'm making that joke in a couple of years. I'm not talking the joke. I'm just guaranteeing that you and I will be doing a prestige podcast, six episodes on how Jason, the Jason Alexander hoodie changed America. The Ghost of Christmas Future. This is horrible. My serial podcast on how that commercial was made.

We got a certain new segment on just prestige podcast podcast future. It's just like bring out the crystal ball. Yeah, I couldn't get, we couldn't get Jason Alexander for the pod, but we got the kid. You know, so we, we did it anyway. It was kind of a right around. No, I can't believe you thought the Paramount streaming commercials were green screen. You don't think they took Spock and Jeff Probst like up to Lake Arrowhead or something to shoot that up to Big Bear. I mean, I am, I think it's a good, obviously a great business decision by CBS to you, to spend as much time as humanly possible promoting that and Clarice and the Equalizer starring Queen Latifah.

But it did seem, the Paramount Plus thing, if, listen, if it weren't specific to the network that it was on, if this were on a neutral playing field, as they say, I would think like 50% of the commercial. we would have seen tonight were for streaming services. And I think, I mean, and you could tell just by the volume of Paramount Plus ads, this is a very specific time in our history. It's like the, you know, like those first couple of years of the internet era where everything was just some computer company, you weren't sure what they did. This is definitely like, just on Paramount Plus alone, this is like the streaming company Super Bowl.

Yeah, let's call our moms after we get off the pod and see if they understood what the Paramount company was selling. in that commercial. It's a no for me dog on my mom. It knew what was going on there. It would have worked better with a tribal council reference, but I don't know. I don't know what they say when they turn out when they extinguish the flame.

What is? Yeah, you're, you're dismissed. I don't know. We don't watch that. A couple ads I like. The Matthew McConaughey ad that seemed to be a tribute to the beloved children's book series Flat Stanley.

You see that where he ate the 3D Doritos. Yeah. became big. I like can I my only my only nit to pick with that is I don't understand how he got into the like he was still a being he was still a he was still a physical a physical being. Well didn't he go through the slot at the bottom? Oh is that what happened? It looked like he just turned sideways and slipped through the glass.

I guess I missed that part. Anyway, anyway. Well, we'll look for the breakdown on a different ringer pod on that one. On the not so great for kids front, how about the M. Knight Shammalam demonic kids beach movie? well, that really skunked it for my family right at the beginning of the Super Bowl. It was a great trick, though, because it felt like a

like mediocre beer commercial for the first like five seconds of it. And you're like, yeah, who's this? This doesn't feel quite Super Bowl worthy. What's going on here? And then, of course, it was kids aging really quick. Is that what it is? Yeah, I think so.

The kids grew up really fast. Yeah, because the mom, the, the bereaved mom was like, oh my God, my son was like nine, when he ran over there. And then if the commercial was 30 seconds long, like 28 seconds into the commercial, you had the mom's voice, there was a voiceover from the mom character.

It was just like, there's something wrong with this beach. It's like, it's a haunted, like does it, is it scarier that it's a haunted beach or that your kid just got 15 years older in five seconds? Yeah,

I would say the latter. The haunting aspect of it is sort of secondary, I think. There was the Budweiser commercial legends, commercial. That was fantastic, but my only problem with that was I forgot all. It wasn't, I forgot almost half of them or all of them. I don't remember. It started. I'm like, who are these people? I knew, I knew the knight, because he's recent, but then I was looking on everybody else. And then they kind of started talking. I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah,

I feel like there were more recognized ones from our childhood that I would not have been a versus seeing, but that's fine. Whatever. I mean, it was, it was a cute idea. I did not love Will Ferrell for GM electric vehicles. That it felt, you know, when we used to watch the Oscars as a kid and be like, Robin Williams would come out to give out an award and he'd be a little past prime Robin Williams. And he'd be like, this is going to be really funny. And then he like, I don't know. I did not know.

I could not put into words how I felt about that one. But that's exactly right. That's, I was nodded on that one. I saw some people who just loved it. And listen, Will Farrell's always funny. Like somebody should just throw $10 million at him to do a commercial every, every Super Bowl. But yeah, a little bit, a little bit confusing. I think I was not paying attention during the first like five seconds of it and sort of missed the entire point of it the whole way

through. But again, Will Ferrell is a funny thing. We have entered a moment in American advertising where when you don't have an idea, you just tell John Travolta to start dancing. You remember the Capital One ad that was out around Christmas where he was dressed as Santa and he started dancing? Yeah. He was actually doing the dance for. from Pulp Fiction. Mm-hmm. And then tonight, I believe it was Scott's lawn

and garden. Am I getting that right? And he was also dancing. Yeah. It was very strange. I mean, there was a lot of other stuff going on in that commercial.

There, well, the same thing about the, the, uh, Will Ferro one that you just mentioned. And that, like,

the celebrities that were in that were sort of not related in any way, except just to like, kind of hit different bases of curating or something. I'm not exactly, sure what was going on. But yeah, the John Travolta one was, I mean, it was, there was something very kind of just like, whether or not it was a good commercial. It was like a, it, it wasn't a car wreck in the sense that it was a bad commercial, but it was a car wreck in the sense that everybody was

going to like stop their car to look out the window at John Travolta proudly, with proudly shaved head doing it, doing like a kind of TikToky dance, you know, I mean, it was, it was a stop and Gawk sort of thing. Yeah, the Will Ferrell one was an electric car wreck, as it were. This one was bad because I actually had to rewind to see what the commercial was for, which is always a bad sign. I'm like, what's the, it's a lawn thing? Yeah.

I just so blown away. I put this out on Twitter and I've used it before. So this was a double dip. But if Quentin Tarantino really wanted to prove his talent to America right now, he would try to reboot John Travolta's career now. He did once before with Pulp Fiction. imagine trying to do it now and he can't be playing John Travolta

like it's some kind of meta-comedy you have to just cast him in a real movie I think a streaming service perhaps this paramount plus that we saw so much of during the Super Bowl just like unlimited budget you have to make a movie for John Travolta that's not a gag about him

being this lost celebrity or something you have to find a role for him I think that would be fascinating Here's the, I mean, one of the things, I don't know, this is a great conversation to have on a media podcast. John Travolta was not a nobody when Pulp Fiction came out. And that's the biggest lie the devil ever told was convincing people that John, that Tarantino had dragged him out of obscurity to re-violize his career. Like, look who's talking three came out like a week before Pulp Fiction. I don't know if you're proving the argument or refuting the argument here, but okay. maybe, but regardless, he was doing fine. I mean, obviously he got some, like, phenomenon and the one where he was an angel

wouldn't have happened without Pulp Fiction, okay. But it's not like he was doing nothing. He was doing totally fine for a guy that was as famous as he had been in the 70s or whatever. The point now being. He made him an A-list star again with Pulpiction. Sure. For a brief. For a time.

Broken Arrow. I don't, I don't, yes. Yeah. Yeah. But him being a, like, a star that needed a recovery was. also part of the mythology that was created there. And I think in a sense, that's what we're feeling now. It's the reversion to the norm that only existed because it was this myth created by Tarantino.

I don't know, man. Wait, you're saying that John Travolta is still big? No, I guess he's got a lot. He's got other stuff going on too. There's a lot of stuff that you got to go through. Yeah. Second half of the game, David, was just like, felt like the second half of the Oscars. Like, oh, it's Wayne's World.

We got Anthony Anderson and his mom. that's by the way a giant Super Bowl like category person with their mom or fictional mom. We had Joey Bosa, I believe I saw the wrestler Edge involved. Ashton Coucher and Milakunis and Shaggy. That was a good one. Yeah, that was kind of funny.

Edward Cisorhands with Winona Ryder, but not Johnny Depp. Yeah, but that was fantastic. I mean, that was the only thing you can do Johnny Debt, but that was, I mean, that was a, that was a, I love that commercial. That was in my top something. I don't even know what I'm,

how I'm numbering them now, but I love that one. Brad Garrett declaring war on Jimmy Johns in a commercial that was shot like a Scorsese movie. Did you totally black out during that one? No, no, no. That was pretty clever. It was aiming lower, but I thought that was pretty good. It really felt like Ray Leo to talking to the cameras in Goodfellas.

We have to mention the Reddit commercial. That was five seconds log or whatever that we ran twice, at least once in the pregame, and we actually did, you know, we paused the, you know, the stream and, looked at it and it got us. It was a smart move. It's one of those that like, I'm sure, I don't know if every ad agency

has had an idea like this over the past decade, but like you and I have both had this idea a million times. Like, why don't you just pay for one second of commercial time, all these expensive commercials? And people will all be talking about it the next day. I mean, now anything is possible.

And it does almost seem like the full-length commercial is just a waste of everybody's time, right? All I just like, all I really need is for you to like, if you just, told me that we have Ashton Kuchin Milakunas, real life married couple, and they're going to be doing a Dorita, whatever, a Cheetos ad, whatever it was, and also Shaggy singing a song, a variation on his fan.

Like, that's all I need to know. Like, I hardly need to see it. So a lot of it feels a little bit, I don't know, overdone is the right word. Also, a category that I did not pay enough attention today to really, like, make the whole list. But Chipotle definitely wins the award for the commercial that's not really about. the thing that it's advertising. We get a few of these every year, but I feel like in the past couple of years, it's been, you know, there's a lot of kind of solemnity in our society, for obvious reasons. We're very, you know, we're going to go too overboard in some directions,

but like, I don't, I kind of just get mad when somebody talking, you know, when I get a commercial that feels like a complete misdirection. Maybe that's just me. I, I know, I'm with you. I'm with you because it also makes me just think too hard and I'm just, I kind of get mad. Yeah. The other one, the other one that was like, there was like a, was it Uber Eats or what of the other, there was one of the food delivery services that were just like advertising local businesses, you know, and it's just like, that was very confusing. Yeah. That was Wayne's world. Yes, yeah, yeah. And there, and there was the other one with Sesame Street, too. The whole thing. Yeah, that was weird. Anyway, that was a good, that was a great commercial that I just got to the end.

And I was just like, what was I just watching? Like, I feel like totally, I feel like totally duped by this old thing. was stealing myself for the Bruce Springsteen commercial, which was like the going to be the COVID comeback commercial. And I must have just blacked out during it. I have no memory of it. I read more about it before the Super Bowl. By the way, there was hilarious tweet. I believe it was on CBS that said, here are the Super Bowl commercials that have leaked. Okay, we have really devalued the word leaked when it has been posted on the Chevy YouTube account by Chevy. Yeah. That has not been leaked. that has been provided to you,

Mr. journalist, to write about so you can give them more advertising before the advertising they pay for. So let us never,

ever use a leak like it was something that deep throat did. That is not the same thing. That's true. Thank you. Two more notes for you, David.

Roger Goodell was tireless during this game. Do you think that was like Roger Goodell's COVID casual look? Like, like it's just not appropriate to go, tie here at the Super Bowl

that that was kind of a it was a good look for him you know kind of a and I was going to just blast CBS here because I don't know if you saw the Brit Reed segments they did during the pregame show Britt Reed is the son of Andy Reed he

was in I can read from the SPN article here involved in a multi-car crash Thursday night that has left a five year old child with life-threatening injuries truly a horrible story CBS comes on there and did an update that was like Andy Reid isn't going to let this be a distraction. He is going to focus on it.

Like, and treated it completely in those terms. Did not mention the welfare of the child, did not mention anything about the victims of the accident. And I'm sitting there watching it. And Nance, to his great credit, came in at the end of the game.

Yes. And said, our hearts go out to those people. And that's exactly right. Like he, I think I'd have to listen to it again, but I'm pretty sure he hit it really well. but putting it into football speak,

I'm just so mystified by that because it's so much easier to do what I just did and read the AP story or the ESPN.com story. It's harder to put it into silly football terms. This is a distraction. He needs to focus to overcome that. Like, what are you doing?

Yeah. What are you doing? I was just, I was shocked. I just thought, I didn't think we did that anymore. Well, I just think it's so hard to get out of the way of the, I mean, this is not, this was a really bad decision to talk about it

that way, but it's almost like the vocabulary that's just sort of institutionalized now through all the, like, you have to tell everybody's tragic story, even if it's not, you know, the truth of it kind of matters less than just the soft focus and the, you know, clanging piano music in the background. That's what it is. It's the grammar of pregame show. Yeah. Infecting everything. You're like, no, no, what if the tragedy is for someone else? Yeah. You know, like the victims we're thinking about are other people, not the coach of the chiefs. I'm just going, oh my gosh.

Anyway, any other thoughts? So should we shut this baby down? One more, not specifically about the game tonight, but a more general thing. Just completely coincidentally, last night I was in bed watching the fantastic 1996 movie daylight with Sylvester Stallone as like the former head

of the EMTs trying to save people was it the Holland Tunnel that had been exploded by the by toxic waste and a crash car fantastic fantastic like

locked room sort of action movie one of the characters and there's like 20 main characters in this movie because it's all these different sorts of people

who are in here trapped together one of the characters is a sort of sports extreme sports CEO type

like the kind of guy who would be like one of the guest hosts on Shark Tank if it were like the you know modern year

played by Vigo Morgensen his name was Roy Nord and the movie starts with him in the boardroom and they

they screen a commercial of him like hyping himself and his product kind of unclear what it is and then it kind of we pan out

and it's him and a bunch of suits watching it in a boardroom and the suits are like we got to go big our stocks dropping we want to run this during the super bowl and and vigo morginson's just like fine just we'll do a we'll do a 30 second spot in the first half and a in a reduced size spot or whatever a minute in the first half 30 seconds in the second half you

like whatever and then that never comes up again but it made me wonder if there's more super bowl commercials in media like are there more fake super bowl commercials out there and i couldn't think of any but certainly there has to be some movies and tv shows that that have like Super Bowl commercials as part of the plot line, right? I mean, it's a huge institution of American culture. Yeah, did Jerry McGuire not have Cuba Gooding recording a Super Bowl commercial? That's a great one. I don't know.

At the press box pod. Yeah. If you know any, maybe entourage, right? I'm just thinking of something that might have something. If they have one, and then we should come back this week or later this week or next week and just actually run, like we can rate those commercials instead of the ones that we just watch tonight. leak us those commercials to use the word I heard earlier this week. He is David Schuemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Zervantes back tomorrow within hours with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. The old guy still got it later, right? Yeah.