There are four reasons why most people watch the Super Bowl:
1. To be that guy who is able to recount every irrelevant detail of the game means that you don’t have to do anything at work the next morning. Instead, you get to hold office hours in the room with the broken coffee maker. (You’d think they would’ve fixed it by now.)
2. It’s the only time of the year that offers an endless amount of foods that are usually reserved for cocktail hours and frilly toothpicks.
3. The actual game. Weirdly, some people are huge fans of one of the two teams that are playing/have bet their life savings on the outcome.
4. For the opportunity to complain on Twitter about not ever finding time to go to the bathroom because we can’t miss the commercials. This will be followed by an attempt to create a trending hashtag, such as #SBproblems.
This year, a 30-second Super Bowl ad will cost a modest $4 million. While this totally reasonable price will likely yield dozens of unmemorable car commercials, it should also produce some moments that will dominate YouTube for weeks, months and years to come. With that, College Magazine presents its inaugural Super Bowl Commercials forecast:
1. More Discount Double Check?
Aaron Rodgers will play this year’s “guy who's trying to mask how furious he is because he would soooo crush everyone on the field right now,” a role usually reserved for Peyton Manning. Will Rodgers’ early playoff exit mean that he’s had time to add yet another installment to the incredibly popular Discount Double Check series? While Google doesn’t seem to have the answer, you gotta believe.*
*I would advise the proponents of Discount Double Check not to make this their rallying cry due to the fact that it’s also the slogan of the excruciating sitcom/baseball organization known as the New York Mets.
2. Bud Light Platinum
It has been reported that perennial slot-filler Anheuser-Busch has ordered a bunch of spots, presumably to promote their new black-out liquid, Bud Light Platinum. Platinum, which contains six percent alcohol by volume, is sure to be a mainstay in freshman dorms everywhere, posing a major threat to Natty and Keystone Light, aka the only two beers in the world that one cannot legally buy if over 21.
Because this beer is clearly in some way intentioned for underage drinkers, it’ll be interesting to see how they promote it. Some ideas:
- Have Soulja Boy in the ad. This is pretty much a no-brainer, as Soulja Boy and this new beer are the only two things to go platinum for no reason whatsoever.
- Do their usual thing of having ambiguously married people who are at no stage in their lives to be drinking heavily act like they’re about to get obnoxiously drunk. Extra points if setting is at some bastion of suburban life, including but not limited to: soccer tournaments, the set of “Extreme Couponing” or a backyard barbecue featuring a spatula the size of a kitchen table.
- Something with the Clydesdales, but in a medieval setting that mimics “Game of Thrones.” This is in no way a shameless plug-in for “Game of Thrones."
3. The “Ooohh I Want To See that TV/Movie” Trailer of the Year
The fact that the Super Bowl is going to be followed by “The Voice” will likely yield the necessary two-second pans of Cee Lo Green wearing sunglasses in a dark setting to make us think that Cee Lo Green is actually Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles combined, a feat accomplished through a 21st century cloning procedure that quietly exists because we’re in the future, man.
But for serious, despite NBC’s attempt to drown us with promotions of new shows that will probably be cancelled within a few weeks, we will likely emerge from the deluge of trailers with one or two that we actually really, really want to see – like want to see it so much that we’ll want to go to that long-forgotten place known as the movie theater. You know, the one that simultaneously functions as an overpriced popcorn dispenser and multi-colored sunglasses emporium.
It’s been confirmed that Paramount, Universal and Disney have bought time. While it’s all but certain the world will be exposed to the theatrical wonder known as Battleship (Tim Riggins likes a hot girl, goes on some Navy mission to prove himself to her antagonistic father/Liam Neeson’s and then plays battleship against aliens!!!). I’m personally hoping that the DuPlass brother’s dramedy, Jeff Who Lives at Home, gets a spot.
4. The Perfect Commercial
Every once and a while, there will be the commercial that appears in every way, perfect. There’s no way to quantify the perfection; it’s simply a mastery of the medium, the message and the intangibles.
The perfect commercial is often an accurate and meaningful commentary on social norms, as well as means for inspiration. They have the ability to make us feel something so wonderful that the fact that we have no idea what we’re actually feeling is probably the best part.
Perhaps this isn’t the best way to describe Terry Tate Office Linebacker, but there’s no doubt that the legend of Terrible Terry Tate falls into this category. Other members of this pantheon of greatness include Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Google’s Parisian Love, and last but not least, Apple’s transcendent 1984.
Of course, the perfect commercial is quite rare, often a once in a decade occurrence. However, with the passing of Steve Jobs, this Super Bowl may be as great a time as any for Apple to assert their unabashedly progressive vision onto to the world once again. The odds for a Jobs tribute is probably quite high to begin with, so turning a tribute into one of the most memorable commercials of all-time only seems to make perfect sense. Shouldn’t be too hard.
5. The Footage Summoner
The footage summoner is pretty much exactly like Napoleon Dynamite, except that if the footage summoner was turned into an animated series on FOX it wouldn’t be one of the top five worst things of all time. Actually, it’d probably be one of the top five greatest things of all time. Could you imagine all the awesome premises?
Potential plots to The Footage Summoner, presented by AT&T:
- The Footage Summoner goes to a restaurant, but he and his wife are seated downstairs where there is little service. To his dismay, their waiter is the guy from the Verizon commercials, whose semi-hipster glasses continue to thwart our hero’s quest to summon sports footage to his phone.
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In an episode guest starring Ryan Gosling, the footage summoner has to find a way to somehow become the more popular Tumblr meme. He will try and accomplish this impossible feat through a series of witty and completely original Instagram photos.
