Sporting Event Featuring Commercials

Yes folks some sort of sporting event is occuring later today. Super something or other. And while I don't know what teams are playing, I believe that trailers for X-Men 2, and the first Matrix sequel are both supposed to air during the 2 million dollar 30 second ad spots. So this time around, you can tivo in reverse!

Comments

Football Vs. Baseball ??

[handy_vandal]

How about a football team versus a baseball team?

Football players are big hulking guys wearing body armor and helmets -- baseball players are smaller and unarmored, but they've got bats.

Should be an interesting match ....

Special Request

[kryonD]

For those of us in the military overseas, we will be watching the game on the Armed Forces Network (AFN). Due to a variety of issues, no commercials are aired on AFN which means we miss out on what could potentially be the more entertaining part of the game.

If someone with a really kind heart could encode the commercials and post them on the internet, we would be very appreciative. Last year wasn't so bad as we do get Fox, although tape delayed by two weeks, so we could watch the commercials when it re-aired. This year, there will be no avenue for us to see the game as we would in America.

Thanks in advance.

The advertisers win again!

[Motherfucking Shit]

I'm a pasty-white geek type, so I don't typically watch sporting events. OK, maybe some hockey now and then in the hopes that someone gets his teeth knocked out by a puck moving at 90mph or his jugular severed by an errant ice skate on live TV, resulting in copious amounts of blood. OK, so I watch NASCAR, too, for the wrecks. I don't normally watch football, though, it just never interested me.

But... A commercial for X-Men 2? Will the lovely Anna Paquin be in the sequel? Will she be in the commercial? Sigh, now I'll have to watch in order to find out. Damn advertisers, they figured out how to make a geek watch football!!

What's next, they'll start having the Olsen Twins host golf?

Go Bucs, Sorta...

[E-Rock-23]

I'm probably one of the few /. readers who gives a crap about football (I dig hockey and soccer, too). But this year, my team, the Steelers, isn't in it (we got screwed by some shoddy officiating). So, I'm gonna go with my fallback "team to root for" system. When it comes to College Football, I'm a Penn State fan. And for years, I sat in the upper deck of Beaver Stadium watching many future NFL heroes play for the love of the game and school pride.

So how does this factor into me rooting for the Bucs? Well, one of the Bucs' wide recievers is former Penn State wide out Joe Jurevicius, who just celebrated the birth of his child last week. I wish Joe the best of luck, and I'm sure that everyone here in Happy Valley is pulling for him to get his first Super Bowl ring.

Then, after the big game (which I'm not watching due to (rock, not high school) Band Practice), I'm headed out to my local bar for post-game karaoke. Sure beats sitting at home playing gToons...

Re:Go Bucs, Sorta...

[schlach]

Wow, who would have thought that there'd be a moderated discussion of football on slashdot... What's next? Maxim magazine reviewing computer games?

Seriously though, I was at a hockey game last week and witnessed the same phenemenon - "There are no good calls that don't go in your favor." Every time your guys trip, you're glad when the ref doesn't call it. Every time one of their guys trips your guys, you scream bloody murder, and if the ref doesn't see it then you invite him to join the game, or offer to buy his seeing-eye dog ice-skates, etc.

Their goalie blocked one of our shots, and one of the guys with me, an Aussie watching his first game, cheered. I said, "Don't cheer, that was their play." And he said, "It was a good play. Hockey was the winner." And that blew my mind, it sounded so foreign. Hard to imagine an American fan cheering for Hockey rather than a specific team.

So I was thinking about this, after the game. If we Americans have such an 'Us vs. Them' mindset in our sports, is it a condition of our cultural environment, or is our enjoyment of the sports conditioning us to perceive other conflicts in the same 'Us vs. Them' mindset? Or is it just part of the same mix of people->culture->people?

Specifically, why don't we have any sports/games with more than two teams? Does anyone else, for that matter? What is it that prevents us from being able to invent interesting games that perceive conflict in more than an 'Us vs. Them' fashion?

I remember WoTC back in the day (dating myself) publishing different variants for their Magic card game that were quite interesting, the best of which was the 'Five Color' game. I've never heard the mechanics of a good 5-team game described anywhere else, so I will describe it as the Five Color game.

5 teams are logically arranged in a pentagon. From the top, clockwise, we find White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. The object of the game is to destroy the teams positioned 'across' from you, ie not next to you on the pentagon. The teams next to you are potentially your allies, not for any high reason, just because you happen to share an enemy. Additionally, your other ally is your ally's other enemy. Tricky.

The additional level of depth and strategy required adds an entirely new enjoyment to the game. You know every alliance is going to be betrayed at some point, it's in calculating the exact moment of betrayal that rewards the winner. It forces the player to be aware of conflicts happening between entirely other teams, and how to use those conflicts to perhaps set your enemies against themselves, or gain an ally. It forces strategy to become sophisticated in ways that calling a football game a chess-match doesn't even come close to.

And the interesting question would be, if America's favorite sports became 5-color games, would we see a corresponding increase in the sophistication with which we perceive international affairs?

I throw it out for conversation. (And secretly I hope that a few mod-makers (or budding sport-inventors) are inspired. I'd love to go hack WarCraft2 to make it support larger maps and a 5-color match up, or making a TF mod for such a game (maybe when TF2 comes out *chuckle*). Or maybe someday my internationally-savvy children will teach their old man how to play '5-color ball'... )

last year's superbowl

[dubiousmike]

Ther is an article about Tivo releasing commercial viewing habits from last year's superbowl. Though the winning kick by the Patriots was the most Replayed event, The ritney commercial cam in second. In fact a number of comercials were Replayed by more viewers than any other actual part of the game, including an amazing trick play.

This is a perfect example of additional creativity in the production of commercials resulting in great ratings and even repeat viewings.

I know I can watch the Bud Light commercial with the two chicks wrestling in water and then mud every single time it comes on. :P

Re:Mind you, the game will be good!

[SonicBurst]

Actually, I saw a blurb on fark.com the other day mentioning that someone set a Raiders vs. Bucs game in Gameday 2003 on a PS2, and (I'm assuming both teams were computer played) the computer predicted a 28-8 Bucs victory.

The scary part is that in the previous 7 times they've done this, they were right every time! Which thoroughly sucks for us Raiders fans! Go Raiders!

Websites for Ads

[kilonad]

Does anybody know of any websites that will be hosting copies of the superbowl ads? In years past, I've relied on AdCritic.com, but it seems they now require you to sign up for a $70/year subscription just to watch ads. They don't even have a cheaper monthly subscription, nor do I really want to pay to watch ads in the first place.

So, any sites?

Re:OT - Re:$2m for 30 secs?

[elvum]

Ah yes, "proof by attacking the person".

Re:You've been able too

[Pxtl]

Yep, I know who power pack is. I still think Silver Surfer would be a good movie. Or Adam Warlock. Something really big and epic and spacey. Marvel is getting away from its roots with these movies: overdone oversized universe-crushing clash of the titans style space gods plotlines.

As long as they don't do fantastic 4 I'm happy.