The Super Bowl is a huge, huge extravagnaza, designed to attract football fans and their helpless victimsfamilies who are also watching. The two big non-football draws are the halftime show (fscking hell, did it have to be The Who???) and the commercials. The commercials are largely ignored at Chez Evil, mostly because that’s when we’re either on the phone or in the kitchen. Except for this year.

CBS has decided, in their infinite wisdom, to allow this commercial/PS announcement sponsored by Focus on the Family (sorry, I don’t link to those people; Google it) and featuring Tim Tebow, star quarterback of the Florida Gators, and his mother. It’s another spin on the classic “pro-life”/anti woman argument against abortion: A young woman had the choice to abort her unborn fetus or not. She chose not to, and that baby became…Ludwig van Beethoven/Barack Obama/George Washington/fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-famous-person-here. This time it happens to be Tebow. As of today, CBS still plans on airing the commercial during the game.

If you recall, a couple of years ago the network turned down a commercial sponsored by the United Church of Christ which featured an inclusive (ie. not hostile toward LBGT people) message. At the time, the reason they gave for their decision was, “We don’t air advocacy ads.” I think that’s a fine policy. It’s a very sensible policy. I also think that in this instance it should be strictly adhered to, and the commercial should be removed from the lineup for the broadcast.

Actually, none of our teams made it to the Super Bowl this year. Not even to the playoffs almost two weeks ago. So we might settle for a nice Cajun dinner and a couple rounds of Call of Cthulhu.

• The road cycling races (mens and womens).
• The mountain biking races.
• The velodrome races (seeing a pattern yet?)
• And, occasionally, when nothing else is on…gymnastics.

That’s pretty much it for our Olympic viewing. I should also say that, unsurprisingly, we are avid viewers of the Tour de France (even though I almost never write about it) and are participating in this year’s Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day. Anyway…

It was great to see the actual course itself. I can’t imagine how exciting it must be to ride the Great Wall of China. The winners of the road biking races were pretty cool too – Spain won the mens’ race, and for the first time Great Britain won the womens’ race.

Gymnastics is the only other sport I occasionally pay attention to. I could talk about how the Chinese womens’ team might have been a teensy bit young to be there, and how sad the US team looked – if I cared about it at all. When does the mountain biking race start?*

*I could say something snarky about “well, once the course has been disinfected“, but I like to take the high road. You know me.

The other official Chez Evil team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, had a 4-game sweep of their first round against the Ottawa Senators earlier last week.

Wouldn’t it be funny if, by some bizarre twist of fate, the Avs and the Pens were to meet in the final round? Yeahhh…funny. I’m not holding my breath, but odder things have happened.

When Evil Dad hollered upstairs, “Hey! Guess who won!”, I could hardly believe my ears. Everybody said the Giants didn’t stand a chance. Everybody said that the Patriots were going to have a perfect season, just like the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Everybody else was just going to hand over the Super Bowl trophy to the Patriots without them actually having to, oh, do any real work and play four whole quarters of football.

Fortunately, the Giants defense failed to read the memo. I only wish they had given Brady the same problems during the regular season game that they gave him yesterday, but I digress.

The only quibble that I have – it’s the NEW JERSEY Giants. The toxic waste dump that the team’s been given to play in for all these years is located not in New York City/the other four boroughs, but in East Rutherford, NEW JERSEY. Not the New York Giants. The New Jersey Giants.

And all hail to the only undefeated team in pro football the NFL ever – the 1972 Miami Dolphins.