Incompetent Ferrets Entertain, but Super Bowl Even Better

Let's not worry about the six-month wait until football training camps start again. Sure, it seems like this annual Death Valley--punctuated only by the oasis of the draft in April--will, like this metaphor, never end.

But at least we had an interesting Super Bowl. Denver and Green Bay treated us to a thriller, with the Broncos coming out on top, 31-24.

Finally, the NFC streak of Super Bowl wins, dating back to the 1984 season, is over. If the AFC wins the Pro Bowl this weekend, people are going to start writing about that conference's dominance--which shows how much sports journalists know.

There's plenty to talk about the game itself: Terrell Davis coming back after getting a migraine, John Elway not playing his best game but playing as hard as he ever has, and Green Bay's decision to let Denver walk in for a touchdown with under two minutes to go.

And there will always be the picture of Reggie White and Gilbert Brown in the fourth quarter, bent over and holding on to their pants, sucking wind like, I don't know, two fat 300+-pound guys.

But that's not what this column is about. Because Super Bowl Sunday isn't just about football. It's about the commercials.

This year, there were a bunch of good ones. It's depressing in a way that all of America's creative genius goes into thinking of funny ways to sell products, but that's beyond the scope of this column. That would require reevaluating our culture and society, and that makes my head hurt.

So here are the best commercials, as far as I could tell.

1. The pool-playing hen. Bud Light's advertisers continue to find new and better ways to sell their product. Basically, a guy bets his buddy a beer that his fowl can beat him at pool.

Of course, the hen is a shark. Something about watching her line up her shot just makes you laugh.

She cleans the table but leaves unanswered the obvious question. If the egg comes out in the direction it does and the eyes point the other, how does it aim?

The commercial ends with the same guy taking his beer-winner to the bowling alley. We may see more of this bionic hen soon.

2. The Tabasco ad. We see a fat, greasy guy sweating on his porch, dumping Tabasco on his fat-filled, greasy cheese pizza.

Then comes a closeup of a mosquito landing on our protagonist. He lets it bite him, and as it flies off, the mosquito explodes.

This is hilarious even if you don't live in the South, where blood-filled mosquitoes are often mistaken for bats.

3. The ferret. Anheuser-Busch strikes again. As sick as I am of the frogs, and as uncompelling as the lizards are, this ad was hilarious.

Basically, Louie gets a ferret to electrocute the Bud-weis-er frogs, but it doesn't work. The sequel to this commercial shows Louie chewing out the ferret.

This is the best ferret airtime since Arnold Schwarzenegger's character had one as a pet in Kindergarten Cop.

4. Doritos in the laundromat. Two guys are trying to impress a woman by tossing up Doritos to themselves and catching them in their mouth.

You guys out there who saw this ad probably have been dying to know who the heroine was. I heard on the radio that she's a former Miss America from two years ago.

Anyway, she tosses the Doritos into a dryer and then zips around the laundromat making incredible catches as they fly out.

You have to see it to get it, so watch TV. It's only shopping period.

Football season is over. But at least it went out with style despite five hours of pre-game shows and a few more hours of post-game shows. Besides the clever inducements to spend money, there was--for the first time in a long time--a great game.

It's about time the Super Bowl was better than the Bud Bowl.