Super Bowl XLV immediately got off to a rough start when Christina Aguilera butchered the National Anthem.
I did not know that something to the effect of, “gave proof through the night that our plane was still there,” was a line in the song, but at least the fly over was cool. Too bad the people inside the stadium could not see it.
This brings me to the commercials. The overall winner with the best quality of commercials was easily Doritos, the funniest being the healing chips. Eminem was also a winner. He was in two entertaining commercials.
Another great commercial was the Volkswagen Passat one. The little boy kept failing at using the force, but when he tried to start the car and it actually did, it was priceless. I was so happy for him.
Overall, the commercials were good, but there were a few bad ones in the mix. The GoDaddy commercials, as a whole, were terrible. I did not like any of them, especially the new GoDaddy girl. Another thing, what is godaddy.com? It makes no sense at all. They couldn’t have come up with a better domain name than that?
The half-time show has to be included when you grade the Super Bowl. I actually thought that the show was pretty good. I guess I might be one of the few people in America believing that.
In a poll done by ESPN, 35 percent of the people polled said they would give the halftime show an F. I was very surprised by this, mainly because I thought the Black Eyed Peas connected to the audience. I liked how they used different types of lights, especially when multiple groups of people made the green arrow. This definitely was not the best half time show ever, but it was far from terrible.
It is now time for the main event – the actual game. The Packers came out on fire and looked like the team that had been there before. Surprisingly, the opposite can be said for the Steelers. Pittsburgh made many mental mistakes throughout the game as displayed by penalties and multiple turnovers.
Green Bay jumped out to a 21-3 lead before the two minute warning of the first half. It was looking promising for the Packers until two of their top three secondary players, Charles Woodson and Sam Shields, were injured.
Pittsburgh took advantage of this and marched down the field scoring a touchdown right before halftime. They went into the locker room with the momentum on their side.
Starting the second half, Pittsburgh’s defense forced a three and out. Ben Roethlisberger got the ball at the 50 yard line and took only five plays to score a touchdown. The Steelers had nearly erased the 18-point deficit.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Green Bay forced their third turnover and eventually scored a touchdown. The Packers scored 21 points off of Steelers’ turnovers, which proved to be the difference in the game.
Although Pittsburgh had all of those turnovers, they still had a chance to win the game. They took over at the their own 13-yard line, down six with 2:07 on the clock. I thought for sure that Roethlisberger was going to put an MVP, game-winning drive together.
I was wrong. The Steelers only got 20 yards and turned the ball over on downs. Aaron Rodgers took two kneel downs and walked away as the Super Bowl MVP, which he rightfully deserved. Rodgers threw for 304 yards along with three touchdowns. By winning the Super Bowl MVP, Rodgers did something that Brett Favre never did.
I have to say that this turned into a great Super Bowl. The game made up for the National Anthem blunder as well as the questionably entertaining halftime show. I have to give Rodger Goodell and Jerry Jones credit for putting a great Super Bowl together.
One more thing – how funny was it when Cameron Diaz fed Alex Rodriguez popcorn?
Congratulations to Aaron Rodgers and the entire Green Bay Packers organization for winning their fourth Super Bowl in team history. Now we just have to hope that owners and the NFL players association can agree on a new bargaining agreement so that there will be football next year.
Joe Beaudoin can be reached at jbeaudoin@spartans.ut.edu.