The SnakePit Super Bowl 2014 Thread

There are a couple of times a year when we have a thread specifically to discuss things not related to baseball here on the SnakePit. We'll have the Oscar thread in four weeks time, but today we get to gather round the magic box in the corner of the living-room [probably more of a magic flat-screen dominating the wall in most cases these days], even those who have little or no interest in the Super Bowl, the teams competing in it, or even the sport in general. That's me, raising my hand over here, in case that wasn't abundantly clear.

But I wasn't kidding about the whole communal experience thing. In 2013, the Super Bowl was watched by 108.4 million viewers. It's hard to find precise numbers for single episodes, but the top-rated TV show for the year, NCIS, averaged less than one-fifth of that, at 21.34 million. Even among special events, the Super Bowl is an unstoppable force: the highest-ranked non-NFL game which I could see was the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, at 25.2 million (most probably watching in the hope of a Hindenburg-style incident), not even a quarter of the Super Bowl ratings.

I'm probably rooting for Team Meteor in this one, having palpable personal reasons to dislike both outfits, with which I will not trouble you here. But my interest will be a great deal more focused on the commercials, though it's not the same as it used to be (he muttered grumpily, before yelling at some passing kids to get off his damn lawn), with them largely being available online before the event. Of course, the plus of that is, you don't have to watch four hours of padded men running into each other and a half-time show by something called a Bruno Mars. Not sure why we'd want to spent 15 minutes staring at a chocolate bar.

If I had to pick one advert in advance, I'm looking forward to, it's likely the Jaguar one which is scheduled to air in the third quarter. It's directed by Tom Hooper, who won the Best Director Oscar in 2011 for The King's Speech, and stars Ben Kingsley, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Strong as three British villains. Should be fun, though sadly, I doubt we'll get to hear Kingsley say "You made me look a right..." - er, well, you know. [NSFW language. No, seriously. Though I may have found a new ring-tone for my phone] Of course, I'll have to find a way to prise the remote away from Mrs. SnakePit and the Puppy Bowl before I can watch any adverts...

Enjoy. And, go _______ [insert team name here]