The Tedium Is the Message

With the Super Bowl just one week away, already the tedious conversations have started about what is sure to be another round of witless shilling before, during, and after the game. Spare me from those who breathlessly anticipate, and then evaluate—with a straight face, no less—the crass commercial messages.

The Super Bowl ads are why the TV remote was invented. If I'm not leaving the room while the game pauses for advertisers to use flatulent monkeys or unbelievably dim-witted males to sell more weak beer, then I'm changing the channel or just hitting the mute button. I take a small pleasure in refusing to be either a part of the live (or should that be comatose?) audience for the smarmy scripts or a participant afterward in the dull discussions of them. If only there were a way for Nielsen to measure the number of viewers indifferent to the small fortune paid for the time between live action on the field.

In the 1967 film “Bedazzled,” Peter Cook, as the devil, laments that he has not done anything really evil since he introduced advertising into the world. And the Super Bowl commercials dramatize how banal that evil is.

Boomer Esiason’s Super Bowl Memory

The highlight of Boomer Esiason’s NFL career was being named league MVP in 1988 and taking the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl that season. Things were looking up for the Bengals late in that game vs. the San Francisco 49ers. They had kicked a field goal to break a 13-13 tie with about three minutes remaining, and Esiason was mentally preparing his post-game lines.

“I was supposed to do the Disney World commercial,” he said. “The group that was shooting it surrounded me on the sidelines and kept asking me if I knew what my lines were. For that entire three-minute period, I’m sitting there going, ‘I’m going to Disney World. I’m going to Disney World.’

“When [the 49ers’] John Taylor scored the winning touchdown, I dropped my head into my hands. Before I could even lift it up and say, ‘I’m not going to Disney World,’ [the group was] running directly across the field looking for Jerry Rice. That is my lasting memory of Super Bowl XXIII.”

Esiason has made a lasting mark off the field. After 14 years in pro football, he hung up his helmet and threw his hat into the media ring as broadcaster and talk-show host. In 1993 he established the Boomer Esiason Foundation after his son, Gunnar, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Esiason has helped raise millions of dollars to battle the disease.

“Gunnar is living, breathing proof that you can live with cystic fibrosis and have a very good teenage life,” Esiason has said of his son, who played football, lacrosse, and hockey in high school. “To me, that’s probably the biggest accomplishment—that we make people realize that it’s not the end of the world.”