Commercials provide conversation among more than football fans

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When the New York Giants and the New England Patriots face off Sunday night, I won’t be watching the game for any bone-crushing tackles or last-second touchdowns.

Honestly, I probably won’t even check the score until the final few minutes of the game or afterward when it’s posted somewhere online just to see which team won.

What I will be on the lookout for is the commercials. Yes, if I end up watching this year’s Super Bowl, it will be for the short advertisements that air in between portions of the game, rather than the actual game itself.

And I bet I won’t be the only one.

I know the Super Bowl is the biggest football game of the year, and it attracts millions of viewers nationwide, but as someone who isn’t a big fan of sports, I simply don’t care enough about the game to actually sit down and watch it in its entirety.

But I will watch a few minutes here and there to make sure I can see some of the commercials that come along with the event.

Without these commercials to entertain me, the Super Bowl would be just another game of over-sized men chasing after an oddly shaped ball and beating one another up. While some fans listen intently to the broadcasters commenting on the game, I wait impatiently, wondering when the current play will end and something less mundane will overtake my TV screen.

The commercials add an entirely different aspect to the sporting event and attract an audience that probably wouldn’t watch the game otherwise.

Let’s face it, Super Bowl commercials are just as much a part of the game as the junk food viewers consume while watching it and the football fanatics screaming at their TV as if the players and referees can hear them.

These fans should remove themselves from the game somewhat and sit back and enjoy the commercials as I do, and perhaps they would have a whole new appreciation for the Super Bowl and all the aspects that come together to make it the sensation that it is.

If these productions weren’t so important, why would companies spend millions of dollars for an advertisement that lasts just a few seconds? The answer is they wouldn’t. These companies pay outrageous prices for a minuscule amount of air time during the game because they know people are watching and taking note of what they’re seeing.

These companies spend hours upon hours planning out every moment of their commercial to create the hilarious and wildly entertaining finished products we watch from the comfort of our homes, or wherever it is we choose to view the big game.

There’s something about Super Bowl commercials that almost everyone — myself included — seems to love.

The creative productions advertise for everything from alcohol and other beverages to cars and movies. And although many of them are cheesy and feature highly unlikely scenarios with subpar acting, they’re effective.

Often, the most outrageous commercials are the ones that work the best. Even though they seem silly, these commercials stick in the viewers’ minds and generate conversations. Even if the talk only consists of bashing the commercial, at least it gets people talking about the product or whatever is being advertised.

Just as dedicated fans who watched every second of the game spend time afterward discussing the major plays, mistakes and the outcome, a lot of viewers — football fans and others alike — also talk about their favorite commercials.

And to me, that’s more than enough of a reason to sit through hours of a boring sporting event, listening to lingo you don’t understand and trying to block out the cheers of other overly excited viewers.

Super Bowl commercials provide strangers to the sports world a chance to be a part of the bigger conversation that otherwise we would have nothing to contribute to.

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