Whatever Happened To The Bud Bowl?

So Sunday was the biggest day of the year for television commercials, and I haven't had a chance to comment until now. I figured if I waited a few days, then I would be forced to discuss only the memorable moments. Now, I remember virtually nothing. I suppose even I outsmart myself sometimes.

I'm a big fan of Super Bowl commercials. Not so much because they're clever and funny. More because they are comforting and familiar. Ever since the point in the early 2000s when Super Bowl commercials became fully self-aware, we've been able to count on them to know exactly what we want to see and to deliver it to us in neat 30-second packages. As always, Pepsi is the choice of a new generation. Bud Light is the choice of middle-aged men who are whipped by their wives yet defiantly wily and inventive. E-Trade proved that if monkeys are cute and funny, then talking babies can be cuter and funnier. Athletic apparel and sports drinks can turn us all into Nazi supermen. Consumers are smart. Money-savers are dopes.

But it goes deeper than that for me. Super Bowl commercials remind me of what I should be striving for in order to be the best American I can be. I should be considering a new job. I should be buying mid-priced foreign cars, web domains, and low-calorie, high-caffeine, vitamin-infused alcoholic beverages. I should be keeping my kids off drugs. I should be worshiping models, pop music stars, and sexy race car drivers. These reminders are especially important during the coldest time of the year, when we're about to face 6 months without football.

Speaking of football, we seem to be seeing less and less of it in Super Bowl commercials these days. I suppose that's evidence that the scale has finally tipped, and consumerism has eclipsed football as the national sport. The only football I recall seeing in a commercial was being daintily manipulated by a lingerie model, a far cry from the days when it was coldly and deliberately manipulated by teams of beer bottles.

So perhaps Super Bowl commercials have gone somewhere since the days of the Aluminator. That's only to be expected in a world that is getting progressively faster, more caffeinated, and more tethered to technologies that we used to do just fine without. But as we are reminded, we can take solace in the fact that beer and sex will always be there. And football, maybe.