The stupor bowl: For many, inventive ads take center stage on football’s biggest afternoon

Aarghh – shiver me timbers! It’s a pirate Super Bowl, for sure. While the Buccaneers and the… Aarghh – shiver me timbers! It’s a pirate Super Bowl, for sure. While the Buccaneers and the Raiders are set to swashbuckle and cannon blast each other up and down the field this weekend, they won’t be the only sea dogs battling it out on Sunday, and no, I don’t mean the wicked scrap that’ll be going on in your belly between Captain Morgan and Admiral Nelson.

I’m talking about the true lords of the high seas; the multinational corporate conglomerates. On no other day do so many of the most nefarious pirates of capitalism come out to do battle. The stakes? The hard-earned dollar of the average American, surely the sweetest booty of them all.

Each year corporations spend millions of dollars for a mere 30 seconds of advertising space during ABC’s eight-hour broadcast of the Super Bowl. This year advertisers are shelling out a hefty $2.1 million per 30-second spot, and with this much money being spent, you can count on quite the spectacle. In fact, “the Super Bowl” is a perfect anagram for “spectacle,” except of course for the extra w, h, o, b and u, and the missing a and c, but I digress.

Who doesn’t remember the Bud Bowl, and who hasn’t seen the now famous Apple Macintosh spoof of 1984? With an expected 85 to 100 million viewers, and 50 percent of American households watching, it is no surprise that Super Bowl ads have become a part of our quickly deteriorating cultural landscape. In fact an estimated 7 percent of those people who watch the Super Bowl tune in only for the ads. The ads themselves have become an attraction and this year should prove no different.

But of course, everyone knows the Super Bowl isn’t really about advertising. It’s about the halftime show! This year we have the AT’T Wireless Halftime Show featuring performances by Shania Twain and No Doubt. There is also the H’R Block Pregame Show with The Dixie Chicks singing the national anthem and Santana performing in some capacity. Oh yeah, be on the look out for the “H’R Block of the Year.” And let us not forget the Cadillac Postgame Show, and the Cadillac Super Bowl MVP. Isn’t the purity of sports wonderful?

Along with buying the rights to the pregame festivities, H’R Block has also laid out some cash for what should be a hilarious 30-second spot featuring Willie Nelson mocking his own grievous tax troubles. Beer super company Anheuser-Busch has purchased 10 spots (that’s more than 20 million dollars) for airing during the game, including the first ad to be aired after kickoff.

Perennial Super Bowl advertiser Pepsi has three spots, one of which is an ad with the Osbournes hocking Pepsi Twist. I always thought he was just speaking metaphorically, but maybe Ozzy Osbourne really is the devil. Gatorade, which is owned by Pepsi, has a really cool ad called “23 vs. 39” featuring a 23-year-old Michael Jordan squaring off against his more aged current self in a 30-second game of one-on-one. Michael Jordan is also highlighted in a commercial for Hanes co-starring Jackie Chan.

Although slower to come around than other industries, movie studios have made up for lost time and have begun to use the Super Bowl as the event to premiere trailers for upcoming blockbusters. Previews for superhero flick No. 1 “The Hulk,” and other upcoming features: “Terminator 3,” “The Matrix Reloaded” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” are all confirmed. While other possible films being advertised during the game include “The Recruit,” starring Al Pacino, “Bruce Almighty” starring Jim Carrey, and either superhero flick No. 2 “Daredevil” or superhero flick No. 3 “X-Men 2.”

There have been a few years where I was included in the 7 percent of people tuned in to the Super Bowl solely to watch the commercials, but this year the promise of a pirate Super Bowl has got me stoked. Although the upcoming commercial onslaught has me feeling proud to be an American, the potential of seeing Rich Gannon and Warren Sapp duel it out with long swords cannot be beat.