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NFL free agent market could offer more than 600 players

2012-02-09T13:31:00.002-03:00

The NFL's free agent market is set to open March 13, and the shelves should be full.

The NFLPA lists 644 players league-wide who have contracts that are potentially expiring in the coming weeks, though some (like Bills K Rian Lindell and Jets WR Patrick Turner) are already re-upping with their teams. Others like QB Kerry Collins and OLB Jason Taylor are retiring. Plenty more will likely get slapped with the franchise tag to keep them off the market (that probably means you, Drew Brees, Ray Rice and Wes Welker) if they don't have new deals in place soon.

Other players could become available and sign elsewhere immediately -- Peyton Manning? -- if they are cut prior to the official beginning of free agency.

Bottom line, this is shaping up as a bloated market now that the new CBA again allows for players with four years of service to shop their talents (players with fewer years in the league can potentially move as restricted free agents). But last year's lockout produced a lot of one-year deals that could lead to multi-year, multimillion-dollar pacts this time around; 49ers first-time Pro Bowl DBs Dashon Goldson and Carlos Rogers are prime examples of guys who gambled and should win.

Here is a partial list of prominent potential free agents by position:

QB -- Drew Brees, Jason Campbell, Matt Flynn, Rex Grossman, Chad Henne, Brian Hoyer (RFA), Josh Johnson, Kyle Orton, Brady Quinn, Alex Smith,Vince Young

RB -- Cedric Benson, LeGarrette Blount (RFA), Ronnie Brown, Michael Bush, Matt Forte, Arian Foster (RFA), Ryan Grant, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Tim Hightower, Peyton Hillis, Steven Jackson (has voidable deal), Marshawn Lynch, FB Le'Ron McClain, Ray Rice, FB Michael Robinson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Cadillac Williams

WR -- Dwayne Bowe, Deion Branch, Plaxico Burress, Marques Colston, Pierre Garcon, Ted Ginn, DeSean Jackson, Vincent Jackson, Stevie Johnson, Brandon Lloyd, Mario Manningham, Robert Meachem, Laurent Robinson, Eddie Royal, Jerome Simpson, Steve Smith (Eagles), Mike Wallace (RFA), Reggie Wayne, Wes Welker, Roy Williams

TE -- Jake Ballard (RFA), Martellus Bennett, John Carlson, Fred Davis, Jermichael Finley, Bo Scaife, Jeremy Shockey, Jacob Tamme

OL -- Jeff Backus, Demetrius Bell, Jacob Bell, Matt Birk, Mike Brisiel, Vernon Carey, Dan Connolly, Brian De La Puente (RFA), Jared Gaither, Ben Grubbs, Andre Gurode, Nick Hardwick, Dan Koppen, Doug Legursky, Deuce Lutui, Todd McClure, Kareem McKenzie, Chris Myers, Carl Nicks, Samson Satele, Jeff Saturday, Jake Scott, Max Starks, Scott Wells, Jeremy Zuttah

DE -- John Abraham, Cliff Avril, Dave Ball, Raheem Brock, Red Bryant, Calais Campbell, Adam Carriker, Andre Carter, Jonathan Fanene, Israel Idonije, Jason Jones, Robert Mathis, Jeremy Mincey, Cory Redding, Dave Tollefson

DT -- Brodrick Bunkley, Antonio Dixon (RFA), Aubrayo Franklin, Antonio Garay, Sione Pouha, Shaun Rogers, Paul Soliai

LB -- Marcus Benard (RFA), Chase Blackburn, Ahmad Brooks, London Fletcher, David Hawthorne, Geno Hayes, E.J. Henderson, LeRoy Hill, D'Qwell Jackson, Bradie James, Jarret Johnson, Manny Lawson, DeAndre Levy (RFA), Curtis Lofton, Jameel McClain, Kirk Morrison, Matt Roth, Barrett Ruud, Ernie Sims, Anthony Spencer, Stephen Tulloch, Erik Walden, Mario Williams

CB -- Brandon Carr, Cortland Finnegan, Brent Grimes, Richard Marshall, Rashean Mathis, Tracy Porter, Carlos Rogers, Aaron Ross, Terrell Thomas, Lardarius Webb (RFA)

S -- Jordan Babineaux, Tyvon Branch, Brian Dawkins, Thomas DeCoud, Abram Elam, Dashon Goldson, Deon Grant, Michael Griffin, Chris Hope, James Ihedigbo, Sean Jones, LaRon Landry, Jim Leonhard, Brandon Meriweather, Reggie Nelson, Bob Sanders

K/P -- Connor Barth, Britton Colquitt, Phil Dawson, Jay Feely, Nick Folk, John Kasay, Donnie Jones, Mat McBriar, Mike Nugent, Matt Prater, Neil Rackers, Josh Scobee, Steve Weatherford

This article was written by Nate Davis and appeared in USA Today.

Titans GM cools talk of pursing Manning

2012-02-09T13:29:00.003-03:00

Titans general manager Ruston Webster can't speculate on quarterback Peyton Manning's future because Manning is still under contract with the Indianapolis Colts.This article was written by John Glennon and appeared in USA Today.

But in a conference call with Titans season ticket holders today, Webster didn't sound like a man who'd be desperate to spring if Manning becomes a free agent.

He was quick to praise his current quarterbacks, veteran Matt Hasselbeck and 2011 first-round pick Jake Locker.

"Obviously (Manning) is a great player in the league," Webster said. "But on the flip side of that, we're excited about our quarterback situation.

"I think Matt brought us through a difficult time, especially once we lost Kenny Britt last year, and I think everyone saw glimpses of Jake Locker. We're really excited about his future, so you know, obviously Peyton is a great player, but we also feel like we're in good hands."

Asked by one fan if he was "married" to the current quarterback situation, Webster again chose to praise his current crop.

"We're very happy with our quarterback situation — what the future holds with Jake and what Matt has done for us," Webster said. "With any position we're always looking to get better, so that will always be something we look at. But … we have a lot of places we need to get better. But we do like our quarterback situation and the three guys we have there."

Some Tennessee fans recently created a website encouraging a Manning return to Tennessee, where he played collegiately.

This article was written by John Glennon and appeared in USA Today.

Swaggering Giants mock Gisele, Pats, Cowboys and Jets

2012-02-09T13:26:00.002-03:00

They say you can talk the talk if you can walk the walk.

The Super Bowl XLVI champion New York Giants publicly mocked three beaten rivals -- the New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets -- as they celebrated at raucous victory rallies in New York and New Jersey Tuesday.

The Giants beat all three clubs on their way to the franchise's fourth Super Bowl championship this season. Running back Brandon Jacobs also took a shot at Pats quarterback Tom Brady's wife Gisele Bundchen for popping off about her hubby's receivers dropping his passes:

She just needs to continue to be cute and shut up.

The Giants have not been shy about talking trash this postseason. Giants players and owners beat their chests Tuesday after beating Tom Brady's Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in four years.

Giants co-owner Steve Tisch boasted his team had cancelled the "Brady Bunch." He also took a swipe at "America's Team" in Dallas after a ticker tape parade down New York's Canyon of Heroes attended by nearly 1 million people:

There's a group of guys in Dallas that call themselves 'America's Team,' but looking out at all of you and the millions of people in the streets [Tuesday], we're 'America's Dream.'

During a pep rally at MetLife Stadium shared between the Giants and Jets, Justin Tuck reminded Rex Ryan the Jets are still little brothers to Big Blue:

You can be sure of whose house it is.

Jacobs is the most outspoken Giant. After the Giants' 21-17 win over the Pats at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, he boasted the Giants had "decapitated" the powerful Pats dynasty of Brady and coach Bill Belichick:

We decapitated them. They can't wear that crown no more.

What do you think? Do the Giants have a right to brag a little after the media wrote them off as contenders? Are Giants players and owners just having fun -- and enjoying a championship few except themselves and their hard-core fans expected a 9-7 team to win?

This article was written by Michael McCarthy and appeared in USA Today.

2012 NFL DRAFT FIRST ROUND ORDER - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:42:00.003-03:00

Following is the 2012 NFL Draft first round order.

The NFL Draft will kick off in primetime for the third consecutive year. The first round will start on Thursday, April 26 at 8:00 PM ET. The second and third rounds are set for Friday, April 27 at 7:00 PM ET. Rounds four through seven will be held on Saturday, April 28 at noon ET.

Coin flips to break the ties for the eighth and ninth selections and for the 11th and 12th selections will be conducted at the Scouting Combine.

2012 FIRST ROUND DRAFT ORDER

# - Subject to Coin Flip

NFL SCOUTING COMBINE PLAYER AVAILABILITY - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:27:00.002-03:00

BEGINS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23

WHAT:
2012 NFL Scouting Combine

WHO:
Top Players Eligible for the 2012 NFL Draft
Select NFL Head Coaches & General Managers

WHERE:
Lucas Oil Stadium, East Club Lounge

WHEN:
Player groups will be available for interviews on the following days:

Thursday, Feb. 23:
Offensive Linemen, Kickers, Punters, Long Snappers, Tight Ends

Friday, Feb. 24:
Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Receivers

Saturday, Feb. 25:
Defensive Linemen, Linebackers

Sunday, Feb. 26:
Defensive Backs

2012 NFL DRAFT:
The NFL Draft will kick off in primetime for the third consecutive year. The first round will be held on Thursday, April 26 at 8:00 PM ET. The second and third rounds are set for Friday, April 27 at 7:00 PM ET. Rounds four through seven will be held on Saturday, April 28 at noon ET.

Super Bowl XLVI - stream, stream away - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:25:00.002-03:00

The first-ever live stream of a Super Bowl in the United States attracted 2,105,441 users, making it the most-watched, single-game sports event ever online, according to data provided by Omniture and mDialog, surpassing any previously reported record. The live game stream was available on both NBCSports.com as well as NFL.com. NBC Sports’ live stream was also available on NFL Mobile only from Verizon. Yesterday, NBC Sports announced its broadcast coverage of Super Bowl XLVI was the most-watched television program in U.S. history (111.3 million viewers) and the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years (47.0 household rating).

“The Super Bowl XLVI live stream exceeded our expectations in every way. Increasingly, sports fans are looking to digital coverage as a complementary ‘second screen’ experience, and we delivered on that promise with unprecedented robust coverage,” said Kevin Monaghan, SVP, Business Development & Managing Director Digital Media, NBC Sports Group. “The record traffic that grew throughout the event, as well as the record high engagement numbers, underscores the complementary aspect of digital as an enhancement to our exceptional television coverage.”

“It was exciting to work with NBC Sports to offer fans the Super Bowl in more ways than ever before,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL, SVP, Media Strategy and Development. “The Super Bowl live stream was a tremendous success in its first year. We will continue to look for more ways to reach our fans.”

NBCSports.com's online streaming of Super Bowl XLVI featured HD-quality video, DVR controls and multiple camera angles along with social interactivity, including a live chat with Mike Florio from NBC's ProFootballTalk, and tweets from Michele Tafoya, NBC Sports' sideline reporter, and Jimmy Fallon, the host of NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Florio and commentator Randy Moss also supplied the halftime content for the live stream with a live video report and game analysis from just outside the team locker rooms. In addition to game highlights, viewers were also able to watch replays of popular Super Bowl TV commercials.

Online Traffic Data

Unique Users - 2,105,441 (live stream online)

Live Video Streams - 4,589,593 (live stream online)

Total Minutes Streamed - 78,624,422

On-Demand Clips - 1,838,812 VOD clips viewed

User-Generated Camera Switches - 1,835,676

Engagement - More than 39 minutes per visit.

Super Bowl XLVI - Doritos, M&M’s ads top Super Bowl commercial surveys - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:21:00.003-03:00

The surveys are in, and Dorito’s and M&M’s were among the high scorers for Super Bowl commercials yesterday.

Doritos won Mullen’s “Brand Bowl 2012” based on 400,000 tweets monitored by the Boston ad agency, which compiled its rankings by the volume of chatter and positive and negative commentaries.

Doritos’ two consumer-generated ads included “Man’s Best Friend,” in which a cat-eating dog bribed a man with Doritos to keep him quiet, and “Sling Baby,” which had a grandmother sling-shooting a baby to retrieve a bag of the snack chips from a boy in a tree fort.

The other top Brand Bowl finishers were Swedish retailer H&M’s commercial featuring a silent David Beckham showing off his chiseled bod in only underwear and Chrysler’s “Halftime in America” ad about the country rebounding from the economic downturn that starred actor and director Clint Eastwood.

Go Daddy — which used its sexy women formula in ads starring race car driver Danica Patrick, former “Biggest Loser” coach Jillian Michaels, a Brazilian supermodel and the Pussycat Dolls — had the highest number of negative tweets and ranked as the least-liked brand, according to Mullen.

“This was truly a watershed year for social media and the Super Bowl,” Edward Boches, Mullen’s chief innovation officer, said in a statement. “With nearly 200 million people on Twitter and two-third’s of all smart-phone owners using social media while watching TV, just about every brand built interactive elements into their commercials, knowing that the true measurement of success these days is immediate consumer reaction and long-term consumer engagement.”

M&M’s, meanwhile, was at the top of the Super Bowl advertising review by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. The Mars brand’s “It’s That Kind of Party” commercial featured a red M&M who shed his clothing at a party after mistakenly thinking a Brown M&M was naked.

“What’s notable about this year versus others is that advertisers played it safe,” Kellogg School professor of marketing Tim Calkins said in a statement. “As a result, we saw fewer standouts, but we also didn’t see as many costly mistakes.”

Skechers and Dannon also were among the top-ranked advertisers in the Kellogg School survey, while Go Daddy, Cadillac and Hulu landed at the bottom.

(source Boston Herald)

Madonna most googled on SB Sunday - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:19:00.002-03:00

Madonna's Super Bowl XLVI halftime performance may have been overshadowed by M.I.A.'s gesture, but that didn't stop the Material Girl from being the most searched term on Google during the game.

Google broke down Super Bowl search trends on their blog Monday. The top five trending searches were: Madonna, Halftime show, Patriots, Tom Brady and Giants.

This Super Bowl's U.S. audience was doing more than snacking on buffalo wings in between plays. According to Google, an increasing number of fans turned to their smartphones and tablets to look up players, halftime show performers and their favorite Super Bowl commercials.

Approximately 41% of searches relating to Super Bowl commercials were made from mobile devices, an increase of 25% compared to the same time the previous day.

This article was written by Mike Foss and appeared in USA Today.

Why New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory is good for the economy - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:16:00.002-03:00

New England may be in mourning over the outcome of Sunday’s nail-biter of a Super Bowl, but all is not lost: The Giants’ victory will provide a much-needed boost to the nation’s economy.

Sure, there could be a small boost to consumer spending as gamblers spend their winnings from betting on the inexplicably underdog Giants. But this is bigger than that. Much, much bigger.

On Tuesday, for the first time since the “Occupy” protesters were ousted from Zuccotti Park, thousands of members of the “99%” will descend on Lower Manhattan. But this time, instead of division and conflict, the gathering will foster unity as bankers, construction workers and busboys come together to celebrate a uniquely American story: the triumph of a less-talented younger brother over his more-talented brother’s more-talented arch-nemesis. A triumph that took place in a building built for the older brother, who will probably never play there again. A triumph secured when a 250-pound man accidentally scored a touchdown by falling backwards into the end zone. Heck, even Pats fans can take comfort in the fact that the Giants’ parade will royally tick off Jets fans.

Imagine the economic ripples to come: Goldman Sachs executives, caught up in the jubilant celebration outside their offices, decide to forgive billions in underwater mortgages. Homeowners, relieved of their burdensome debts, hit the stores to buy up Ahmad Bradshaw bobbleheads and some of those tough, American-made Chryslers that Clint Eastwood was talking about at halftime. The ensuing manufacturing renaissance restores American competitiveness, while the sudden fuel-efficiency gains from all those new cars help drive down oil prices, putting still more money in Americans’ wallets.

Meanwhile, New Englanders, forced to suffer a year in which only one of their sports teams won a national championship, return to the self-pitying bitterness that long fueled the local economy. MIT’s engineering geniuses develop a new fuel based on maple syrup, over night turning Vermont into an energy powerhouse and ending our dependence on foreign oil.

The Jets, desperate for attention following the Giants’ victory, hire Tim Tebow, bringing together East Coast liberals and Midwestern conservatives, who realize their differences aren’t as great as they once thought. Washington politicians, inspired by New York’s example, end their partisan infighting and agree on sensible, comprehensive budget reform, leaving the U.S. on firmer financial footing. Europe, seeing the power of football, gives up soccer entirely and experiences a sudden surge in productivity that miraculously resolves the continent’s debt crisis.

In short, the Giants’ victory ushers in an era of global prosperity. The grateful masses give the credit to Madonna, who boldly called for world peace at the end of her halftime performance. Eli Manning humbly lets her bask in the spotlight, his goofy grin giving no hint of his critical role ending poverty and conflict.

Oh, and the Red Sox win the 2012 World Series.

This article was written by Ben Casselman and appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Super Bowl XLVI - the Commish Delivers - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:15:00.004-03:00

It was about 90 minutes after Super Bowl XLIII, a game that always will be remembered here because of the Steelers' fabulous comeback against the Arizona Cardinals. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was at a private party, his tie off, his sleeves rolled up and a cold adult beverage in his hand. Earlier that evening, he had handed the Lombardi Trophy to Steelers owner Dan Rooney, the man who pushed hardest for him to become commissioner in August 2006. Goodell was feeling pretty good about himself and his league.

Imagine how Goodell felt Sunday night after Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

It was another terrific game, the New York Giants' 21-17 victory against the New England Patriots going down to the final play. Goodell, a noted perfectionist, wasn't pleased with the classless middle-finger salute in the halftime show by one of the featured singers, whose name is not worth mentioning. But everything else was good. No, everything else was great.

Everything about Goodell's $10 billion-a-year NFL is great, actually.

Well, almost everything.

We'll get to the concussion issue in a moment.

Goodell has enemies in this town, mostly because he has had the audacity to fine linebacker James Harrison and other Steelers for illegal and dangerous helmet-to-helmet hits. But his legacy as one of sports great leaders has been secured. He has taken the powerful NFL -- carefully constructed by previous commissioners Paul Tagliabue and Pete Rozelle, not to mention brilliant owners such as the Rooneys -- and made it bigger, stronger and better.

In the summer, Goodell negotiated a new, unprecedented collective bargaining agreement with the players that assures a decade of labor peace. In December, with television ratings soaring, he signed off on a nine-year deal with the networks that will mean $6 billion a year in revenue for the NFL and its players. Even more money will roll in once the league gets a bigger global presence, a Goodell vision.

And you want to know why the NFL owners recently extended Goodell's contract through the 2018 season?

That's right, Pittsburgh, you have Goodell for at least seven more seasons.

Deal with it.

It's fair to say the Steelers didn't celebrate Goodell's extension. Harrison called him a "crook" and a "devil" in a magazine interview in August, later apologizing for the name-calling. Harrison and other Steelers long have complained that Goodell is power hungry and has too much say in the discipline for both on- and off-field discretions. They voted against the new CBA, the only one of the 32 teams to do so.

"Being associated with the NFL is a privilege. It's not a right," Goodell said a month ago on the CBS show "60 minutes." "When you're here, you have to meet that bar.

"I take my responsibilities very seriously. I want to make the league better. To do that, you can't make everybody happy ...

"I have to make sure the integrity of the game is protected at all costs."

Many Goodell critics are offended when he talks about integrity. They were happy the Giants beat the Patriots Sunday night because of "Spygate." In 2007, Goodell fined Patriots coach Bill Belichick $500,000 and the team $250,000 and made it forfeit a No. 1 draft choice after the Patriots were caught taping hand signals of opposing coaches. Goodell then burned the evidence.

I agree with Goodell, who said the taping had "a limited effect -- if any -- on the outcome of any game." I also agreed with him when he said he didn't "think it taints [the Patriots'] accomplishments."

Not everyone does.

"Told you, cheaters never win!!!!!!!!!" Harrison tweeted Sunday night.

Talk about classless.

Harrison also has feuded with Goodell over the concussion issue. He was fined $100,000 by the NFL in the '10 season for illegal hits and suspended for a game in '11 for his cheap shot on Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy. Harrison is willing to risk long-term brain damage to make a lucrative living, saying famously he gladly will "go through hell so my kids don't have to." Not all players feel that way, though. They know former players are coming forward with serious health issues because of concussions. Two new lawsuits were filed Friday against the NFL, claiming the league knew the dangers of head injuries but refused to do anything to protect the players. Former Pitt star and NFL Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett brought star power to a previous lawsuit last week by adding his name as a plaintiff.

The NFL has denied any wrongdoing.

Clearly, concussions are the greatest challenge facing Goodell. There might not be a solution. Players are bigger, stronger and faster, and their collisions are brutal. One day, the NFL could ask players to sign waivers acknowledging the risks of the game and agreeing not to sue the league. Goodell said that's not in the immediate plans. The league and the players have committed $100 million to fund concussion research. They also will devote $1 billion to improve the pensions and medical benefits for retired players.

"We will not quit," Goodell said Friday at his annual State of the NFL address at the Super Bowl. "We're going to do what we possibly can to help our retired, current and future players."

That includes Harrison, not that he has much interest in the help.

Harrison said he was disappointed the Steelers lost to the Green Bay Packers in another wonderful Super Bowl -- Super Bowl XLV -- for all of the obvious reasons. But he said he also was disappointed he didn't get to whisper a message in Goodell's ear on the podium at the Lombardi presentation.

"Why don't you quit and do something else, like start your own league in flag football?"

That's a horrible idea.

The NFL and its players need Goodell to keep doing what he's doing.

He has been great for the league.

(source Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Super Bowl XLVI - A true Patriot - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:13:00.002-03:00

A season dedicated to his late wife Myra fell just short of the ending he had envisioned, but New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft nevertheless praised his team's "strength and spirit" in the wake of Sunday's gut-wrenching loss to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.

Kraft spoke briefly to the media Monday afternoon after the team had arrived at Gillette Stadium in buses, passing a couple hundred fans who waited behind barriers to greet their fallen heroes. Included in the crowd were a number of youngsters holding signs thanking the Patriots for a good season.

"I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to the fans for the support they gave the team and my family all year," said Kraft. "They came out even (Monday). That's unbelievable to me.

"When we dedicated this season to my sweetheart, I spoke with the coaches and the players and asked them to do something that would be special in her honor. The strength and spirit I saw with the team was unlike any other team I've seen in my 18 years in the NFL.

"That sense of spirit also generated by our fans was appreciated by the team and our family. That's something that I'm forever to be grateful for. I'm proud of our fans."

Patriots coach Bill Belichick echoed Kraft's sentiments about the makeup of this team.

"I'm real proud of them," he said. "They worked hard all year. They competed well all season and we won a lot of games. The ones we didn't win we fought right until the end and played very competitively. We did that last night and just came up a little bit short. I have all the respect in the world for the team, and all the players, what they've done for over six months. It's not about one game or one play or anything, it's a whole body of work.

"I really, really enjoyed coaching this team. I have a lot of respect for them."

Falling short, 21-17, in the Super Bowl to the Giants -- for the second time in the four years, in a similarly agonizing last-minute fashion -- was not easy to swallow. But Kraft adopted a big-picture acceptance of the frustrating final outcome.

"What happened is we have created a level of expectations that is high. I'm very happy with that," said Kraft, whose Patriots won Super Bowls in 2002, 2004 and 2005 before losing to the Giants in 2008 and 2012.

"There is a six percent chance of getting to the Super Bowl and a three percent chance of winning it. I think our coaching staff and our players did a remarkable job this year," he said.

"We're all disappointed with what happened," said Kraft. "(But) that's the beauty of the NFL. That's the reason the networks pay our league as much as they do. No one knows how things will go. Not the head coach, the quarterback, the owner, the defensive linemen. Two or three plays make a difference in the game."

Those key plays were made by the Giants in this case, disappointing the Patriots players on more than one level. Not only were they unable to win the big game, they fell short of accomplishing a more spiritual team-wide goal, said defensive back James Ihedigbo.

"It was an amazing season," said Ihedigbo, one of just a handful of players in the Pats' locker room Monday.

"We dedicated the season to (Myra Kraft) and her honor and we went out and played that way. We wanted to finish it the right way and hand Mr. Kraft and his family the (Lombardi) trophy. It didn't work out that way, but it still was an amazing season," he said.

And already, Kraft is setting his sights on next year, and a return to the Super Bowl.

"We are excited with our core of players and our young players," said Kraft. "I'm also excited that we have two No. 1s and two No. 2s in the upcoming draft."

Belichick was also in turn-the-page mode.

"We'll try to take a little time here and regroup, and figure out some of the things we need to do and move forward," he said. "The Combine is in two-and-a-half weeks and I'm sure there will be a lot of other things on the agenda between now and then. So we'll just take them as they come. For right now, we're just kind of collecting our thoughts and we'll figure it out here in due course."

The 2011 season, meanwhile, is now in the books, a season that produced a mediocre 5-3 start, followed by 10 wins in a row and another birth in the Super Bowl.

"It was," said Kraft softly, "a memorable season."

(source ESPN Boston)

NFL has failed to tackle plight of retired players - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:11:00.001-03:00

Sunday, on the most sacred day of the football year, there were several thousand older men with gnarled fingers and replaced hips watching with mixed emotions.

Mostly, for the four hours or so it will take to get through the game and any accompanying halftime wardrobe malfunctions, they will swell with pride. The Super Bowl is their legacy.

Part of the time, they will just swell — ankles, knees, hips, wrists. If there is a body joint, it will have fluid on it. It is a condition of having played in the NFL. They knew, going in, that this wasn't tap dancing, that they'd get hit a lot and hurt a lot. The game is tackling and being tackled. Helmets and foam knee pads can protect only so much.

Most would be fine with the gnarls and aches, if their pioneering contributions were respected. They don't want brass bands and weekly hugs. They don't expect to be revered, just remembered. They want only what they believe is their just due, what workers with the risks and high profiles of professional football players should not have to beg for.

The ongoing saga of the retired NFL players is a walk through a maze. It is as complicated as it is emotional. The Cliffs Notes:

•The league seems to have an agenda of stopgap mollifying. Retiree groups characterize that with a motto: Delay, Deny and Hope They Die.

•The players' union, the NFL Players Assn., which was assumed to be representing the retirees as well as the current players, clearly did not, especially under the leadership of the late Gene Upshaw.

•One of the more active leaders among the retired players, former Cleveland Browns defensive back Bernie Parrish, pointed out recently that there was a Supreme Court precedent — Allied Chemical & Alkali Workers, Local Union No. 1 vs. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. — that unions represent current employees only. That ruling came in 1971.

•There are several retired players' groups, none agreeing fully with the other. Arguments include who gets to use the term "summit" for their planned convention.

•Some groups are focused on pension needs, others on medical benefits. Their disparity and clashing agendas allow the NFL and the NFLPA to point at the mess, roll their eyes and use it as an answer to public concern.

On a recent afternoon in Murrieta, former NFL fullback Curly Morrison and former player agent Larry Muno sit at a table amid a pile of documents and dictates from the NFL. Morrison had enough success after his playing days to not need NFL pensions and medical benefits. Muno, who represented the likes of Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas, had clients not as fortunate. Both are haunted by stories of down-on-their-luck peers. Both remain active in seeking solutions.

Morrison tells of discovering Jungle Jim Martin, the former Detroit Lions star, living in a trailer in a field a few miles up the road in Wildomar. Martin's daughter said she knew her dad needed a better place, but she couldn't afford the first and last month's rent. Morrison wrote a check, and it was done.

"I went to see him," Morrison said. "He came out of the trailer and looked OK, other than the big sore on his face and the hole cut in his tennis shoe so his foot would fit."

Martin died in 2002 at 78.

Muno, a retired lawyer, said he and Morrison tried to create a home for retired players in need, such as Martin.

"The owners rejected every gesture we ever made," he said.

Sadly, this is an old story. It became newer this summer, when the NFL labor deal that divvied up an $11-billion revenue pot created by ticket sales, licensing and TV rights also set aside $620 million in a so-called Legacy Benefit Fund for retired players. The checks have started to come in, and for most that meant an additional $124 a month.

Nope, no numeral missing there.

Numbers can be manipulated and misinterpreted. The one most often floated by the retired players, especially Parrish, is the pension for a 10-year Major League Baseball veteran. He receives about $195,000 a year. Muno, who has been privy to many cases, says a 10-year NFL veteran's pension will be closer to $30,000. The $124 windfall doesn't ease the sting of that comparison.

One explanation is obvious. Baseball had Marvin Miller, who as union head did a wonderful job for the players. Football had Upshaw, who did a wonderful job for Upshaw. After Upshaw, the former Raiders lineman, died in 2008 at 63, it was found that his estate reached nearly $17 million, most of it in a deferred-compensation package.

Who knew Al Davis paid that well?

The NFL has at least attempted to address the medical needs of retirees with its 88 Plan, named after the playing number of former Colts star John Mackey. In recent years, Mackey would sit in a tavern in the Mount Washington area of Baltimore and chat with fans, oblivious to his reality. He died of dementia in July at 69. The 88 Plan pays $88,000 a year for nursing-home care for those in situations such as Mackey's. When Mackey's family put him in a nursing home, the NFL at first refused to pay, ruling his disability was not football-related.

Interestingly, Mackey had been the first president of the NFL Players Assn.

The table in Murrietta remains full of letters and NFL-related documents. Morrison has more stories. Muno, more lawyerly, cuts to the chase.

"The only way anything is going to happen," he said, "is a publicity campaign that embarrasses the owners. Have a PR firm go after them. Make it a PR problem. Become a pain in the. . . .

"They don't have to admit anything. They just have to step up."

Shortly thereafter, icicles will start forming in hell.

(source Los Angeles Times)

Super Bowl XLVI - Good job Indy - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:10:00.002-03:00

Indianapolis was once called Naptown and India-No-Place for a reason.

Native son Kurt Vonnegut Jr. referred to it in 1970 as “the 500-mile speedway race, and then 364 days of miniature golf, and then the 500-mile speedway race again.’’ People used to roam city streets on Sundays, picking off pigeons with shotguns as part of “Operation Pigeon-Rid.’’ For decades, there was no reason to stay downtown after dark.

This week, as 150,000 visitors descended on a new, vibrant district before Super Bowl Sunday, even cynics agreed the city had successfully shed its image as a bastion of boredom in what was once called “flyover country.’’ Hotels, restaurants, theaters, and a 3-mile canal walk flank Lucas Oil Stadium and Super Bowl Village. Thousands of residents have moved into downtown apartments and condo complexes are rapidly rising. And visitors have noticed.

“Incredulity is in the air. Naptown is alive and thriving. The urban Super Bowl is a huge success, where everything is in walking distance, and everyone feels the electricity,’’ wrote Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic.

The transformation was decades in the making, beginning long before city leaders ever dreamed of bidding for the Super Bowl. In the 1970s, then-Mayor Bill Hudnut decided that sports was the ticket to revitalizing the city and putting it on the national map.

It seemed to be a good fit. Indianapolis was the capital of a sports-crazed state that had Notre Dame winning national football championships in the north, Indiana University winning national basketball championships in the south, the Indianapolis 500 in the middle and a high school basketball tournament that created Hoosier Hysteria.

The city had one professional team, the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, but it struggled financially; a telethon was staged to sell tickets to ensure the owners didn’t move the team.

But, Hudnut said, “we needed an NFL team.’’

Hudnut, mayor from 1976 to 1991, began attending NFL meetings with other city officials in the late 1970s; in 1978, he traveled to Chicago to meet with Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay about moving the team to Indianapolis.

“He wasn’t that interested at that time in talking with me,’’ Hudnut said.

In 1982, the city began construction on a $77.5 million stadium without any guarantee it would ever house an NFL team.

“Politically, it would have been regarded as folly and as a white elephant if we had not been able to acquire a team,’’ said Hudnut, now a professor of professional studies in real estate at Georgetown University. “But I knew what we were doing was right. I wanted to make Indianapolis a major league city. In order to do that, you had to have major league sports.’’

The city lured the Colts from Baltimore in 1984, a year after making a presentation to NFL owners to gain some interest in an expansion team.

Irsay, meanwhile, had thought of moving the Colts from Baltimore to cities including Phoenix, Memphis, Jacksonville, and Indy. City officials began negotiating with Irsay in secret in 1984. Just weeks later, with Maryland lawmakers threatening to use eminent domain to keep the team in the state, the Colts sneaked out of Baltimore in the middle of the night and moved to Indianapolis.

“It changed the spirit of the city. People were really excited,’’ Hudnut said. “It enhanced our image.’’

The Hoosier Dome opened in July 1984 to a crowd of 67,596 for an Olympic team exhibition. The Colts began playing in the same stadium in August.

Indy wasn’t ready to stop.

The city had hosted the National Sports Festival in 1982 and built a natatorium that would later host NCAA men’s and women’s swimming championships and US Olympic trials. A track and field stadium and a velodrome were built, and the city began billing itself as the nation’s amateur sports capital. It hosted the Pan Am Games in 1987. The NCAA’s Final Four was played in Indianapolis in 1980. Five men’s and one women’s Final Four have been held there since. The NCAA, the National Federation of State High School Associations, and the governing bodies of seven sports - including track and field and gymnastics - are all based in Indianapolis.

As the city’s sports reputation grew, it gained new life at its heart.

Before the sports renaissance, there were few reasons to stay in the heart of the city after businesses closed. For half a century, the city’s biggest event was the Indianapolis 500, which attracts more than a quarter-million fans each Memorial Day weekend. But there was little nightlife, and even fewer places to stay.

Now, the city that had fewer than 500 hotel rooms downtown in 1970 has more than 6,500, and about a dozen new hotels have opened in the past decade, including a 1,000-room JW Marriott. The number of downtown restaurants and bars has doubled to 300 in the past 10 years, and there are more than 200 shops, according to Indianapolis Downtown Inc., the city’s tourism agency.

On any given night, visitors can travel just a few blocks to see the Pacers at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse, stage productions at the Indiana Repertory Theatre or live music at the Old National Centre or White River State Park. The downtown canal walk offers pedal boats, gondolas, and bicycles for rent.

Thousands of residents have embraced downtown living, and more than 3,200 houses, condominiums, and apartments are expected to be under construction or completed within five years.

Tourism officials say visits to downtown attractions have increased 83 percent since 1994.

The numbers don’t surprise Don Ruark, a 78-year-old retiree from Fillmore, Ind., who recalls the city’s quiet days when he worked at drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co.

“What’s happened here has really been an awakening,’’ Ruark said. “If word hasn’t gotten out about Indianapolis, it should.’’

A Super Bowl had still seemed out of reach to many. The city lost out to Minneapolis for the 1992 game and to Dallas for 2011.

Indiana University athletic director Fred Glass, president of Indianapolis’s 2011 bid committee, said the city was given little chance of hosting because it was a small-market city in a cold-weather climate. But the committee agreed this time that decades of transformation had paid off.

As all eyes turn to Indy this weekend - and despite naysayers who say the game is a one-time gift - city leaders already are thinking about future Super Bowls.

“I’m pretty confident we’re going to nail this and people are going to say, ‘Wow, they put this on really, really well,’ ’’ said Mayor Greg Ballard. “ ‘We need to go back there.’’

(source Boston Globe)

All things being equal, parity rules the NFL - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:08:00.000-03:00

The New York Giants were 7-7 on Dec. 19. The Redskins had beaten them 23-10 at MetLife Stadium the day before, Washington’s second win of the season against New York.

Fast-forward seven Mondays, and those same Giants — at least in name — traveled home from the state capital of Indiana with a second Lombardi Trophy in four years after beating New England 21-17 Sunday night in Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium. Quarterback Eli Manning was named Super Bowl MVP after leading the Giants on an 88-yard touchdown drive in the game’s final minutes to knock off coach Bill Belichick, quarterback Tom Brady and the Patriots for the third consecutive time in late-game fashion.

That would be the same Manning who threw three interceptions without a touchdown pass against the Redskins in Week 15.

In today’s NFL, the adage about any team making the playoffs can win it all is more than just a cliche. Half of the past 10 Super Bowl champions were seeded third or lower in their conference.

“I don’t know if I really can [explain it],” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said Monday. “We never changed our objective. We never changed our goal. We never changed our attitude about what had to be accomplished and what we had to do. This is a great statement to our players as well as to our mental toughness.”
New York's season got off to a rocky start when quarterback Eli Manning and the Giants were squeezed by the Redskins 28-14 in Week 1, the first of Washington's two wins over New York. (Associated Press)New York’s season got off to a rocky start when quarterback Eli Manning and the Giants were squeezed by the Redskins 28-14 in Week 1, the first of Washington’s two wins over New York. (Associated Press)

In the 10 seasons since the NFL expanded to 32 teams with the addition of the Houston Texans and went to an eight-division alignment in 2002, a No. 1 conference seed has won the Super Bowl just twice — New England beat Carolina, the NFC’s No. 3 seed, in Super Bowl XXXVIII, and New Orleans beat Indianapolis three years ago in the only Super Bowl featuring two top-seeds in this span.

Earning one of the top two seeds in a conference and a bye in the first round of the playoffs still gives a team a better chance at reaching the Super Bowl; 13 of the 20 Super Bowl contestants the past 10 seasons have been either a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. It just hasn’t meant much once the Super Bowl kicks off.

Indianapolis won as the AFC’s third seed in 2006. The Giants‘ two victories have come when they were seeded fourth and fifth in the NFC. The one time they did earn the NFC’s top seed, in 2008, they lost their first home playoff game. Pittsburgh in 2005 and Green Bay last season won after being their conference’s sixth and final playoff team.

The Giants needed wins against the New York Jets and Dallas in their final two games to win the NFC East and earn a playoff spot. They steamrolled Atlanta 24-2 at home in a wild card gam before going on the road to beat the NFC’s top two seeds; they ended defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay’s season 37-20 in the divisional round and then edged No. 2 seed San Francisco 20-17 in overtime.

New York persevered through a four-game losing streak following a 6-2 start. The fact that no one else in the NFC East could take control of the division allowed the Giants to stick around and finish strong, much in the same way New England couldn’t hold a 17-9 lead in the third quarter or come up with that one play in the final four minutes to stop the Giants.

“Coach Coughlin deserves all the credit in the world for getting us back on track,” said defensive end Justin Tuck. “We have been in that situation all year, and we just kept telling ourselves one game at a time, one play at a time, and we finished it.”

This article was written by Kevin Goheen and appeared in the Washington Times.

Mario now looking to catch contract offer from Giants - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:06:00.000-03:00

David Tyree’s unforgettable catch in Super Bowl XLII was the last of his career.

Impending Giants free agent Mario Manningham will certainly make more catches in the NFL, following his game-changing sideline grab in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVI, but there is no guarantee the 25-year-old wide receiver will make them as a Giant.

“I want to come back,” Manningham said last night at an appearance with fans at Modell’s in Times Square. “I want to come back, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just going to try and enjoy this Super Bowl [win]. I’m not really thinking about it right now.”

Manningham, who did not comment on whether he believes he is a No. 1 receiver, said he spoke with Tyree after the 21-17 Super Bowl XLVI win over the Patriots about the historic play.

“He just said, ‘Good game and great catch,’ ” Manningham said. “I knew I was in. Eli [Manning] threw a perfect ball that nobody could get but me. I’m speechless still, just overjoyed.”

Despite winning their second championship in five seasons, the Giants were listed by the online betting site, Bodog.com, at 15-1 odds to win next year’s Super Bowl. Seven teams were considered more likely to win, including the Packers, Saints, Patriots, Texans, Eagles, Steelers and Ravens.

Defensive end Dave Tollefson, who appeared with Mannigham, said it didn’t matter the Giants continue to be overlooked. So far, he said, it’s only helped.

“Somewhere around here there are a lot of empty graves because we refused to get in them,” Tollefson said. “The funny thing is as long as you can get in the playoffs, you got a chance — 9-7, 16-0, it doesn’t matter. We’re an embodiment of what Coach [Tom] Coughlin believes in and he believes in hard work, faith in yourself and love.”

With their young core, the Giants could be in position for several more postseason runs. Although, Tollefson noted, injuries are the great unknown.

“You never know when you’re going to get 17 guys on IR,” Tollefson said. “Oh yeah, that happened this year didn’t it?”

So, what could have happened if the Giants weren’t hindered by so many injuries? Well, perhaps something the Patriots couldn’t accomplish.

“Maybe we could’ve made a run at that undefeated season,” Tollefson said with a laugh.

This article was written by Howie Kussoy and appeared in the New York Post.

Auto-industry ads score at the Super Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:05:00.002-03:00

Clint Eastwood has made Chrysler's day.

For the second year in a row, the car maker has won over audiences during Super Bowl XLVI with an emotional commercial. This time it featured a gritty Mr. Eastwood trying to rally Americans.

"This country can't be knocked out with one punch; we get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines," intoned Mr. Eastwood in the two-minute spot crafted by Wieden+Kennedy.

"Powerful and one of the best Super Bowl ads ever," said Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor New York, a branding firm owned by WPP PLC.

"So, Clint Eastwood needs to be president. Just saying," read a Tweet on Twitter.

Chrysler's "Halftime in America" Super Bowl XLVI Ad starring Clint Eastwood talks about the economic situation in the country.

TiVo's Tara Maitra on Lunch Break discusses her company's second-by-second, audience measurement of Super Bowl commericals, including which ones ranked as the game's advertising winners and losers.

Overall, it was the auto industry's night as ads for Volkswagen, Acura and Chevy also took top honors, according to ad pros and consumers polled by The Wall Street Journal.

The showing solidifies car makers as part of the Super Bowl's ad elite, a spot that had long been reserved for beer and soft-drink makers.

"Car makers are now among the pantheon of Super Bowl advertisers," says Mark DiMassimo, chief executive of Digo, a New York ad firm.

An Acura commercial, which starred Jerry Seinfeld being one upped by Jay Leno, was a crowd pleaser.

"Fantastic. This is what a Super Bowl ad should look like," said Mark Wnek, a former chairman of Lowe New York, a unit of Interpublic Group of Cos. The ad was crafted by Rubin Postaer & Associates, an independent ad firm in Santa Monica, Calif.

Early results from WSJ.com's ad poll, when about 36,000 votes were cast, had Acura in the lead for best commercial.

Model Adriana Lima appeared in a Teleflora ad that missed the mark with some, particularly women.

Amanda Melson, a copy writer at Publicis Groupe SA's Kaplan Thaler, said General Motors Co.'s ad showing a man who had driven a Silverado pick-up and survived an apocalypse was "epic."

Leah Leask, a 37-year-old from Prince Rupert, British Columbia, said, "It was funny, and I like that they made fun of Ford." She was referring to the twist at the end in which several men realize their Ford-driving buddy didn't survive,

Ford Motor Co., on the other hand, wasn't amused. It asked GM to stop showing the spot, but GM declined. "We do not agree with some of GM's claims in their ad," Ford said in a statement. Omnicom Group Inc.'s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners crafted the Silverado spot.

Volkswagen, whose mini-Darth Vader ad was one of the most successful spots last year, had a repeat performance. Its latest spot, crafted by Interpublic's Deutsch, starred a cute but fat dog getting in shape.

Last year Volkswagen's ad "was awesome, but that new spot was really good," said Brian Corby, a 35-year-old futures trader in Lakeview, Chicago.

Spots that fell flat, according to the ad executives polled, included commercials from companies such as Teleflora, General Electric Co., Century 21 Real Estate and Samsung Electronics Co.

Teleflora's spot, which featured Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima promising men in a sultry voice that if they give Valentine's Day flowers they will receive, seemed to miss the mark with some, particularly women.

"Teleflora's 'give and you shall receive' tagline/spot is the most sexist of the night," read one tweet.

More than 100 million viewers were expected to watch the nail-biting game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, broadcast on Comcast Corp.'s NBC. For a chance to reach such a big audience, many marketers shelled out $3.5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time — the equivalent of $116,667 a second.

To get more bang for their buck, the majority of advertisers released their ads online several days before the game. While that left few surprises for game night, it helped marketers earn millions of dollars in free advertising.

Honda Motor Co.'s ad spoofing the 1986 hit film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" had 11.8 million views online as of midday Friday, while a teaser for the spot had 17.8 million views, according to Kantar, a marketing research company owned by WPP.

Another winner from the big night, according to ad executives, was Coca-Cola Co., whose ad created by Wieden + Kennedy showing football-watching polar bears edged out arch rival PepsiCo Inc.'s medieval spot, which featured Elton John in heels.

Coke's ads are "beautiful storytelling and classic," said Jason Graff, a group creative director at Kaplan.

A consumer-generated commercial for PepsiCo's Doritos, which showed a cat-murdering dog blackmailing its owner, outdid many of the spots devised by Madison Avenue professionals.

"Doritos was the best; I wanted to rewind to watch it again," said Michelle Garcia, a 40-year-old speech pathologist from Yonkers, N.Y.

Marketers once again deployed countless animals to woo the crowd. Bears, chimpanzees, a slew of dogs and even a cheetah tried to win over viewers. But one of the best animal-spot awards went to Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, which showed a dog named WeeGo that fetches Bud Light when partygoers call, "Here Weego." The brewer's ad slogan: "Here We Go."

"Weego is the new Spuds MacKenzie," said Kaplan's Mr. Graff, a reference to the dog in previous Bud Light ads.

The best-performing rookie award went to Dannon yogurt, whose ad featured a woman head-butting actor John Stamos. The Danone SA-owned brand outdid other big-game ad rookies such as Century 21 Real Estate, which aired a spot featuring celebrities including Donald Trump.

"It's the most random collection of celebrities since 'Dancing with the Stars,' and it still doesn't make me want to sell my house in this market," said Matt MacDonald, executive creative director at WPP's JWT New York.

This article was written by Suzanne Vranica and appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Las Vegas books win on SB Sunday - Ingles

2012-02-08T10:03:00.000-03:00

The Super Bowl XLVI rematch between Eli Manning's New York Giants and Tom Brady's New England Patriots generated heavy gambling action in Las Vegas, resulting in the second biggest "handle," or betting total, in Nevada over the past 10 years.

Gamblers wagered $93,889,840 across the state's 184 legal sports books, according to Frank Streshley of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Despite widespread predictions that the wiseguys in Sin City would take a big financial loss on the game after installing the Pats as 3 point favorites, the state says Nevada's legal sports books won $5,064,470 on the game.

Those sports books lost $2,573,103 when the Giants' upset previously unbeaten Pats at Super Bowl XLII in 2008, the only time the state's sports books lost money on the Big Game over the last 10 years.

This year's $93,889,840 handle tops the $87,491,098 wagered on the Green Bay Packers' win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in last year Super Bowl XLV.

But it still trails the $94,534,372 bet on the Steelers win over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL in 2006, before the bottom dropped out of the U.S. economy and a lingering economic recession wiped out millions of jobs.

Of course, the nearly $100 million bet legally on the Big Game is just a fraction of the money that actually changed hands. Billions of dollars were bet on the game online, across offshore sports books and in office pools and betting boxes.

This article was written by Michael McCarthy and appeared in USA Today.

Super Bowl XLVI - Super Bowl ads grab social-media buzz - Ingles

2012-02-07T13:21:00.001-03:00

Super Bowl social-media buzz was as much about the commercials as the Big Game today.

Leading the trending pack: a grandma slinging a baby for Doritos and David Beckham baring his tattooed body for apparel retailer H&M.

But some of the biggest buzz on the Web today surrounded Chrysler's "Halftime in America" ad featuring Clint Eastwood, which played not during the game, but during halftime.

As a result, we have made a change in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter voting for the best commercial.

Historically, our Super Bowl Ad Meter voting, done by consumer panels during the game, has not included ads shown during the halftime show.

But now that online voting on Facebook and USA TODAY.com is offered separately after the game, we've included two major halftime ads, from Chrysler and Hulu, in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter.

All the ads can be viewed and voted on through Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET in the Ad Meter app on Facebook and at admeter.usatoday.com. The Ad Meter winner, based on how highly ads are rated, will be announced Tuesday night.

Online social media buzz is, of course, just what the high-spending advertisers want. Their Super Bowl marketing strategies have fully evolved to putting equal weight on broadcast and social-media buzz. And truth be told, the very purpose of most Super Bowl broadcast spots is to drive folks to socially tweet, like, share or even rant about their spots.

"People don't want to be told what they like; people want to tell you what they like," says Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay.

She should know. A leader in the buzz today on the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter is the chipmaker's consumer-created commercial, which featured a grandma in a motorized chair. She creates a way to sling her grandson across the yard — with a rubber band-like setup — to grab a Doritos bag from a young taunter.

Among Monday's early buzz-leaders:

• Doritos baby sling. "People are always looking for a different darling," says Mukherjee, of the baby sling ad's popularity online. The key to the spot's online success, she says, is that Doritos started making consumers familiar (online) with its Super Bowl ads many months ago. "You can't do this one month before the game," she says.

• Doritos cat-burying dog. That spot, along with the baby sling spot, garnered the most early tweets — 48,536 — for Doritos, according to Brand Bowl 2012, which ranks brands based on volume of chatter and positive/negative commentary on Twitter in reaction to their advertiser Super Bowl spots.

• David Beckham in undies. The black-and-white spot with the soccer star wearing only his extensive body art (tattoos) and his H&M David Beckham briefs, topped all others early Monday with more than 109,000 total social-media comments via Twitter, Facebook posts and blogs, reports Bluefin Labs, a social TV analysis company.

PHOTOS: Super Bowl ads were stocked with celebrities

• Clint Eastwood pumps up America (and Chrysler). The "Halftime in America" spot, where the steely-eyed actor talks about America getting back on its feet, has been a veritable buzz machine in itself. It angered some Republican politicians who saw it as pro-Obama. It caused some social-media chaos when it was temporarily taken down from YouTube following what turned out to be false copyright issues. And it ranked second in overall social-media buzz early Monday, with 96,000 comments, according to Bluefin.

Among the social-media comments about that ad was this tweet from Hal Thomas (halthomas): "Last night I learned that if you express dislike for anything involving Clint Eastwood, you put your citizenship at risk."

(source USA Today)

Super Bowl XLVI -- Honda Won the Super Bowl Before It Even Began - Ingles

2012-02-07T13:19:00.001-03:00

There will be a lot of stats released over the next few days on what people remembered, liked or just tweeted about during the Super Bowl. At some point, the instant stats on "buzz" and the like will give way to more meaningful measures: did it improve long-term perception of the brand, or lift sales?

One hoped-for metric over the long-term is that consumers will choose to watch an ad again, and perhaps over and over again, on the web. That was the genius of Volkswagen's "The Force" campaign last year, which earned more than 90 million views on the web over the past year and why a dozen or so marketers attempted to emulate it this year by releasing their campaigns before the game began.

After asking Visible Measures to update its figures on web views, we have a winner by that measure: Honda. The teaser for Honda's "Ferris Bueller" ad dominated going into the Super Bowl, and the extended version of the ad is still drawing viewers. But not by much: VW is a very close second with "Dog Strikes Back." Honda's Acura division also did well with its Jerry Seinfeld/Jay Leno spot, meaning Honda has two spots in the Top Five.

Why is this important? Partly because Super Bowl ad time is so expensive. By reaching almost as many viewers on the web as during the game last year, VW was able to extend the reach of "The Force," spreading out the cost of its Super Bowl buy over many more impressions.

Here are the updated numbers as of Monday morning:

Honda: Matthew's Day Off: 18.4 million
VW: The Dog Strikes Back: 17.8 million
Acura: Transactions: 15.7 million
Doritos: Crash the Super Bowl 2012: 6.3 million
Audi: Vampire Party: 5.3 million

(source Ad Week)

Super Bowl XLVI -- Five Amazing Facts About Social Media and the Super Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-07T13:17:00.002-03:00

Our editorial partner Bluefin Labs, the Cambridge, Mass.-based social-TV analytics company, spent last night monitoring social commentary about Super Bowl commercials. This morning the Bluefin data team is busy crunching the numbers. We'll post a top 10 list of the spots that blew up the biggest

1. Bluefin Labs has so far tracked more than 12.2 million social-media comments during and after Super Bowl XLVI, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. That's a 578% increase over the total Bluefin tracked last year (1.8 million).

2. Twitter, via its official @twitter account, said the final three minutes of the Super Bowl helped push total tweet volume up to an average of 10,000 tweets per second.

3. We have a new social-TV high-water mark. "Last night's Super Bowl is the biggest social-TV event we've ever recorded -- by a wide margin," Bluefin's Tom Thai tells me. "It surpassed the previous record of 3.1 million social-media comments, held by the MTV Video Music Awards last August."

4. Madonna's halftime show alone generated more than 862,000 social-media comments; by comparison, Bluefin recorded 966,000 social-media comments for the 2011 Academy Awards. "If the halftime show were its own standalone televised event," Thai said, "it would rank fourth in terms of all-time social-TV events for entertainment. It would trail only the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, the 2011 American Music Awards and the 2011 Academy Awards."

5. Bluefin Labs tracked more than 985,000 social-media comments specifically related to just Super Bowl commercials -- topping the total for the entire telecast of the 2011 Academy Awards.

(source Ad Week)

Super Bowl XLVI -- M&M'S Tops 2012 Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review - Ingles

2012-02-07T13:15:00.002-03:00

M&M’S earned top marks for its playful “It’s That Kind of Party” ad, winning the eighth annual Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review. Other top-ranked advertisers for 2012 include Skechers and Dannon, while Go Daddy, Cadillac and Hulu ranked at the bottom of the perennial Review.

“M&M’S commercial introduced Ms. Brown, a new character, and kept in line with the brand’s equity,” said Clinical Professor of Marketing Tim Calkins, who leads the event with a panel of students from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “At Kellogg, our Review evaluates the ads based on strategic execution and the potential to build brands, and M&M'S did this well.”

“What’s notable about this year versus others is that advertisers played it safe. As a result, we saw fewer standouts, but we also didn’t see as many costly mistakes,” continued Calkins.

GE and Toyota were among other brands that joined Go Daddy, Cadillac and Hulu at the bottom of the Review.

“There were a number of suggestive ads this year from brands like Fiat, H&M and Teleflora,” said Associate Professor of Marketing Derek D. Rucker, who also leads the Review. “We've come to expect it from Go Daddy, but this year there definitely seemed to be more skin in the game.”

Unlike other popularity-based reviews, the Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review uses a strategic academic framework known as ADPLAN. The acronym, developed by Kellogg School faculty, instructs viewers to grade ads based on Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplification and Net equity.

“Overall, there were not many superstars but all the brands avoided big fumbles. Unlike last year’s controversial Groupon and HomeAway spots, advertisers steered clear of controversy,” added Chris Reynolds, one of 44 Kellogg MBA students who participated on the Ad Review panel.

Super Bowl XLVI - the numbers - Ingles

2012-02-07T13:01:00.002-03:00

Super Bowl XLVI is the most-watched television program in U.S. history and the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years, according to fast national data released today by The Nielsen Company.

The game, in which the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots, 21-17, was seen by a record 111.3 million viewers (6:31-9:58 p.m. ET), topping last year’s 111.0 for Super Bowl XLV on Fox and is the biggest audience to watch a television program in U.S. history.

MOST-WATCHED PROGRAMS IN U.S. TELEVISION HISTORY

1. 111.3 Million – Super Bowl XLVI, NBC (Sunday Night’s Game)
2. 111.0 Million – Super Bowl XLV, Fox
3. 106.5 Million – Super Bowl XLIV, CBS
4. 106.0 Million – M.A.S.H. Finale, CBS
5. 98.7 Million – Super Bowl XLIII, NBC

HIGHEST-RATED SUPER BOWL IN 26 YEARS: The game earned a 47.0 rating and a 71 share, a gain of two percent from last year’s 46.0/69 for Super Bowl XLV and is the highest-rated Super Bowl since 1986 (Bears-Patriots, Super Bowl XX, 48.3/70). The 47.0 rating is the 6th highest in Super Bowl history.

· The game drew a 40.5 rating in the advertiser-coveted Adult 18-49 demographic, the highest for a Super Bowl in 16 years (41.2 for Super Bowl XXX on Jan. 28, 1996)

HIGEST-RATED SUPER BOWLS:

1. 49.1/73 – Super Bowl XVI, CBS
2. 48.6/69 – Super Bowl XVII, NBC
3. 48.3/70 – Super Bowl XX, NBC
4. 47.2/67 – Super Bowl XII, CBS
5. 47.1/74 – Super Bowl XIII, NBC
6. 47.0/71 – Super Bowl XLVI, NBC (Sunday Night’s Game)
T7. 46.4/71 – Super Bowl XVIII, CBS
T7. 46.4/63 – Super Bowl XIX, ABC
9. 46.3/67 – Super Bowl XIV, CBS
10. 46.0/69 – Super Bowl XLV, Fox

VIEWERSHIP GROWS THROUGHOUT THE GAME: The viewership and rating grew throughout the game and peaked at a 117.7 million viewers and a 50.7/72, respectively, from 9:30-9:58 p.m. ET in the fourth quarter when Eli Manning led the Giants on a game-winning drive.

HALF HOUR VIEWERSHIP (Times ET):

6:31-7, 99.2 million
7-7:30, 107.9 million
7:30-8, 110.9 million
8-8:30, 114.0 million
8:30-9, 114.3 million
9-9:30, 115.4 million
9:30-9:58, 117.7 million

HALF HOUR RATINGS (Times ET):

6:31-7, 42.5/69
7-7:30, 45.5/71
7:30-8, 46.4/71
8-8:30, 47.4/70
8:30-9, 47.7/70
9-9:30, 48.9/70
9:30-9:58, 50.7/72

HALFTIME SHOW FEATURING MADONNA IS MOST-WATCHED EVER: The halftime performance by Madonna (8-8:30), was seen by 114.0 million viewers, nearly four million more than last year’s performance featuring the Black Eyed Peas (110.3 million), and is the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show featuring entertainment ever (dating back to 1991).

· The halftime viewership 18.3 million more than NBC’s last Super Bowl with Bruce Springsteen (95.7 million).

· The halftime show earned a 47.4 household rating, six percent higher than last year (44.7/68) and is the highest-rated halftime show featuring entertainment ever.

“THE VOICE” DELIVERS HUGE NUMBERS: The season two premiere of “The Voice” that followed the Super Bowl averaged a 16.3 rating in adults 18-49 and 37.6 million viewers overall, making it the highest-rated entertainment program in 18-49 in six years, since ABC's “Grey's Anatomy” post-Super Bowl telecast on February 5, 2006 (16.5). "The Voice" is up versus last year's post-Super Bowl telecast of "Glee" by 47 percent in 18-49 (16.3 vs. 11.1) and up one percent versus the 2010 post-Super Bowl telecast of "Undercover Boss" (16.3 vs. 16.2).

BOSTON SETS LOCAL MARKET RECORD: The rating in Boston was the best ever for an NFL game in that market (56.7/81) topping the previous high of 56.1/78 for Super Bowl XXXVI (56.1/78 on Fox).

· The New York market registered a 49.7/74, the second-highest overnight for an NFL game in that market, trailing only the 53.4/72 for Super Bowl XXI, the Giants first-ever Super Bowl. By comparison, New York registered a 44.9/67 for Super Bowl XLII, the last time they were in the big game.

· The host market of Indianapolis registered a 56.4/79 overnight rating, the second-best overnight for a host market only trailing Jacksonville (58.9/77) for Super Bowl XXXIX).

TOP 10 METERED MARKETS FOR SUPER BOWL XLVI:

1. Boston, 56.7/81
2. Indianapolis, 56.4/79
3. Norfolk, 54.2/73
4. Columbus, 54.1/72
5. New Orleans, 54.0/72
T6. Nashville, 53.5/74
T6. Jacksonville, 53.5/70
8. Buffalo, 52.9/72
9. Kansas City, 52.1/73
10. Milwaukee, 52.0/73

*New York ranked 18th with a 49.7/74

Super Bowl ads battle for championship - Ingles

2012-02-07T12:56:00.003-03:00

The pressure was on. The tension was thick. And then, there were yawns in between.

The Super Bowl may have been a nail biter, but the ads were a snooze.

Actor Clint Eastwood waxed for two minutes about Detroit and Chrysler. An M&M candy stripped "naked" at a party. And stars from the 90s were everywhere, as were dogs and babies, of course.

Companies paid an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot for the right to duke it out Sunday in front of the expected 111 million-plus fans. But it was all so ordinary with fewer surprises.

That's mostly because nearly half of the 70 Super Bowl advertisers put their spots out online in the days leading up to the game. That's a big difference from last year when only a few spots were released ahead of time. And the companies that did wait until game day for the "big reveal" didn't take many risks. In fact, most settled on cliche plots with kids, celebs, sex and humor.

"Advertisers this year are playing it very safe," said Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University. "They're running spots that are clearly designed to appeal to a broad audience and not to offend."

Here's a look at the game's ads, play by play:

SEX SELLS - OR AT LEAST ADVERTISERS HOPE IT DOES

Advertisers showed a little skin in their Super Bowl.

An ad for domain name-hosting site GoDaddy shows racecar driver Danica Patrick and fitness expert Jillian Michaels body painting a nude woman. A spot for clothing retailer H&M features soccer star David Beckham in black-and-white in his undies. And online florist Teleflora and automaker Kia both use Victoria Secret's model Adriana Lima in their Super Bowl ads.

But perhaps the two most blatant examples of "letting it all hang out" came from car companies.

Toyota's spot for its "reinvented" Camry features a "reinvented" couch made up of women wearing bikinis. "It also comes in male," a voiceover in the ad says while showing a couch of shirtless men.

And among the few standouts for the night was a Fiat ad that equated seeing the car for the first time with making out with a sexy Italian super model. The tagline: "You'll never forget the first time you see one."

"They did a good job of showing that some decisions are made with the heart, some decisions are made with the head and the Italian car decision resides in the groin," said Greg Dinoto, chief creative officer of advertising agency Deutsch in New York. "It was sexy and surprising and fun."

BABIES AND DOGS, OH MY

Who doesn't love cute animals and babies? Advertisers are banking there aren't many among us.

That's why Doritos used both. One Doritos spot shows a man being bribed by a dog with the chips to keep the animal's dirty secret about a cat's disappearance. In another spot, a grandmother uses a slingshot to hoist a baby up to grab a bag of Doritos that belongs to a boy in a tree who had been taunting the baby with the chips.

Those two ads were crowd favorites, said Peter Dabol, who analyzes advertising effectiveness at research firm Ace Metrix. The firm polled 500 viewers about the ads to find the most popular.

"It's a typical Super Bowl, funny carries the day," he said. "Advertisers are driving for attention and likeability."

Likewise, Skechers shoe company introduced its new running sneaker with an ad showing a French bulldog winning a greyhound race by wearing the shoes, of course. The dog then moon walks across the finish line.

And software company 2nd Story Software's ad used toilet bowl humor, literally. The ad to promote its free TaxAct software shows a boy who looks everywhere to find a respectable place to relieve himself. He winds up going in a pool.

The tagline: "Totally free. Feels good."

THE STARS WERE OUT

Celebrities always draw attention. And advertisers took a gamble that using stars would be enough to grab attention.

Chrysler, one of nine automakers advertising during the game, aired a Super Bowl ad starring Clint Eastwood. The aging actor talks about the rebirth of Chrysler and Detroit. The two-minute "Imported from Detroit" ad, one of the few spots that weren't released before the game, follows the company's ad last year that starred rapper Eminem.

"How do we come from behind, how do we come together and how do we win?" he asks. "Detroit is showing us it can be done. What's true about them is true about all of us."

Chrysler's ad was among the few standouts on Sunday. "Those very few ads that weren't overexposed up front ended up with a real advantage," said Raymond Taylor, a professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business in Villanova, Penn.

Meanwhile, real-estate company Century 21's ad shows that a real estate agent is able to outdo speed skater Apolo Ohno on the ice, business mogul Donald Trump in business and former football player Deion Sanders at an open house.

And in an ad for Pepsi, "The X Factor" winner Melanie Amaro belts out "Respect" for music icon Elton John, who plays a king in the spot. "Pepsi for all," she says. At the end of the ad, John finds himself in the dungeon with rapper and reality TV star Flavor Flav.

REMEMBER THAT? NOSTALGIA FACTOR

Some advertisers attempted to tug at viewers' heart strings by stirring up old, fond memories.

Honda's ad for its compact sports-utility vehicle CR-V shows actor Matthew Broderick living a grown-up version of his 1986 hit movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The ad includes two dozen references to the movie.

An Acura NSX ad features 1990s comedic titan Jerry Seinfeld battling with late-night talk show host Jay Leno over the sportscar. The ad includes Seinfeld references like a cameo by the "Soup Nazi" character.

And during Downy's pre-game ad, the company remakes one of the most classic commercials of all time, Coke's 1980 spot "Mean Joe Greene." In the original, a little boy gives a gruff football player Joe Greene a Coke as he comes off the field. The Downy remake stars Greene and actress Amy Sedaris (in the little boy role) giving Greene a can of Downy fabric softener.

This article was written by Mae Anderson and appeared in the Seattle Times.

Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth play Mario Manningham's fourth-quarter catch perfectly in Super Bowl XLVI - Ingles

2012-02-07T12:54:00.002-03:00

The voices are the human element. The other stuff is the technology. When they combine to tell a story, it provides evidence why NFL football is so watchable and popular.

And when they mesh on the biggest play of the Super Bowl, they can serve to avoid controversy as well. That’s what happened with 3:46 left in the fourth quarter Sunday night and the Giants trailing the Patriots, 17-15.

This set the stage for Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to provide their own highlight of the evening. For most of the Giants’ 21-17 victory, the NBC mouths handled the flow of the game well. That was expected.

But with the Giants facing a first-and-10 from their own 12-yard line, the equation changed. Eli Manning connected on a 38-yard pass to Mario Manningham, who had two defenders whacking away at him near the left sideline before he went out of bounds near the 50.

Michaels’ call was straightforward. It was a tough catch worthy of Al Exigente cranking up the volume. Then he turned things over to Collinsworth, who had been critical of Manningham’s route running (“he fades his routes” toward the sidelines) earlier in the game.

Now Collinsworth, properly, played it cautiously. He has done enough games to know even if a catch looks like a catch it’s not always a catch in the NFL.

“It’s not quite David Tyree but it’s close,” Collinsworth said. Yeah, he could’ve said it was Tyree minus the glue but we’ll cut him some slack.

Then the first replay aired. “This is absolutely brilliant if he makes this play. Watch his feet,” Collinsworth said.

By the second replay it was clear Manningham had gotten both feet down and had control of the ball as he fell out of bounds. NBC then delivered its super-magnified stop-action shot. Bill Belichick’s challenge was shot down.

Fortunately, nobody got jobbed here.

Collinsworth advanced the story, saying the catch should change the Giants’ strategy.

“Now the Giants, you must pay attention to the clock,” Collinsworth said.

Michaels picked up on this, suggesting the Patriots might let the Giants score quickly so there would be some time left on the clock for Tom Brady to do his thing.

With 1:04 left and the Giants with a first-and-goal from the 7, Ahmad Bradshaw took the ball up the middle. As Michaels would say, “the sea parted.” Bradshaw looked as if he was trying to take a knee at the goal line to kill some more clock but, his momentum carrying him, rolled over into the end zone.

“I guarantee Bradshaw was told to get down,” Collinsworth said. “It’s a big mistake, Al.”

For the Giants, fortunately, it turned out to be a harmless one, but a play that will be debated throughout the Valley of the Stupid for at least 24 hours.

Just one play of a memorable telecast.

This article was written by Bob Raissman and appeared in the New York Daily News.

Personal profiles help counter excess of Pregame Show - Ingles

2012-02-07T12:47:00.001-03:00

There were moments — well, some were much longer than moments — on Sunday when NBC’s Super Bowl pregame show felt as if it were headed into a quality abyss.

It is an abyss that other networks have stepped into because of the nature of these bloated, moneymaking entities. Without enough concrete material — or enough to supposedly please both casual and hard-core viewers for five or six hours — Super Bowl networks veer into red-carpet nutsiness and sponsor kowtowing. The formula has been described thusly: if we can sell it, we’ll program it, even if it stinks.

So, yes, NBC was headed into the abyss, with celebrity interviews by Nick Cannon, who acted overwhelmed, overmatched and overexcited. Like his predecessors at other networks, Cannon had a dreadful task: asking vapid questions to stars with little to do or say but promote their projects, like Danny DeVito hyping “The Lorax.”

And NBC hyperpromoted its programming in myriad ways, including an inexplicably bizarre song-and-dance production number that starred nearly everyone the network has ever employed save Bob Hope and Lorne Greene. But it had no humorous payoff, despite the presence of comedy habitués like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Alec Baldwin. The song-and-dance salute to the departing “Today” anchor Meredith Vieira last year was better.

And, yes, NBC slipped into a box of Ritz crackers, a sponsor, as the “Top Chef” host Tom Colicchio oversaw the making of Ritz snacks. Fox and CBS did the same thing the last two years. Ritz executives must be too scary for a network to say, “No more.”

Brian Williams, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” showed up next to Bob Costas, to display the Giants jersey under his blazer. Why? He’s a Jersey guy and he’s the face of evening news domination. And his show “Rock Center” is moving to Wednesdays!

But NBC’s missteps were balanced by a pacing that never let football stray too far from the viewers’ attention. If we had to endure the silliness of Adam Sandler talking to Cannon, NBC kept shuttling back to its season-long studio analysts Rodney Harrison and Tony Dungy; to its hired guns for the day, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers and Pittsburgh’s Hines Ward; and to the hosts Costas and Dan Patrick.

Harrison was at his best, bringing emotion to the broadcast, especially his lingering disappointment that his former team, the New England Patriots, lost to the Giants four years ago in the Super Bowl. An on-field segment paired Harrison with David Tyree, the former Giants receiver who made that epic, side-of-the-head catch late in that game.

“I’ve seen that play maybe 500 times this week, and sitting next to David right now, I’m still emotional,” Harrison said, sounding as if he might need counseling. “I blamed myself for six months, and it was devastating to the point where I felt like walking away.”

Each time Harrison appeared onscreen — in the Patriots’ locker room or on the field to show how to defend New England tight end Aaron Hernandez — he demonstrated an electric personality that contrasts nicely with Dungy’s calm, even priestly demeanor.

There were times in the five hours when I felt as if NBC’s Olympic unit had taken over the pregame show — and not just because of the overlong promotion for the Games this summer in London. A bunch of heart-tugging features, short and long, were reminders of the ones NBC does for Winter and Summer Games athletes.

In no particular order, NBC told the story of the Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft’s adjustment to life without his wife, Myra, who died in July; of Tom Martinez, the New England star Tom Brady’s quarterback mentor, who needs a kidney transplant; and of Patriots punter Zoltan Mesko’s escape from Communist Romania, with his family, in the late 1990s.

Also: Giants receiver Victor Cruz’s desire to inspire youths who have difficult lives, as he did in Paterson, N.J.; and the legacy of Benedicto Kiwanuka, the slain prime minister of Uganda, which can be seen in part in his grandson, Mathias, a Giants linebacker, who grew up with his family in Indianapolis.

But of most significance was Peter King’s feature about Steve Gleason, a former New Orleans Saint, who has A.L.S. Just two years after the diagnosis, Gleason can barely speak. His wife, Michel, memorably said: “I pray for him to keep his voice. I want him to talk to me all the time and to talk to Rivers,” their son.

Perhaps I will never be satisfied until each network adopts a pregame manifesto that excludes devotions to shameless self-promotion and excessive doses of “Access Hollywood”-ism. Will it happen? Probably not. The template is set in stone.

But maybe NBC’s better moments offer a guidepost for a better future.

This article was written by Richard Sandomir and appeared in the New York Times.

Super Bowl XLVI -- Fans bet $94M on Super Bowl at Nevada casinos - Ingles

2012-02-07T12:42:00.002-03:00

Sports fans bet $93.9 million at Nevada casinos on Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and New England Patriots, the most wagered in the past decade.

The Gaming Control Board says unaudited tallies show 184 sports books won a little over $5 million on the football action. New England was about a 3 point favorite, but the Giants won 21-17.

It was a different story for Nevada casinos when the same two teams played in the 2008 Super Bowl. The Patriots opened as 14-point favorites four years ago, but Giants backers bet the line down to 12 points and got paid when New York earned a 17-14 win.

Nevada casinos lost the most money ever on the Super Bowl that year—$2.6 million.

(source Yahoo Sports)

Super Bowl XLVI -- Apologies from NFL, NBC after M.I.A. flips bird - Ingles

2012-02-07T12:38:00.002-03:00

British hip-hop artist M.I.A.'s obscene gesture in the Super Bowl halftime show is prompting apologies from NBC and the NFL. But it isn't immediately registering as a moment that viewers latched on to.

The digital video recorder maker Tivo said Monday that there wasn't an appreciable bump in viewers who played back the moment where M.I.A. extended her middle finger during Madonna's performance of "Give Me All Your Luvin"' on Sunday night's show.

Tara Maitra of Tivo said the company would check to see if more people play back the moment on Monday after there was publicity about it. Tivo has 2 million customers in the U.S.

The NFL blamed NBC for being not quick enough to censor the gesture, while NBC noted that the NFL is responsible for the content of the halftime show.

There was no wardrobe malfunction, nothing like that glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple eight years ago that caused an uproar and government scrutiny. Instead, in front of some 110 million viewers on NBC and uncounted others online, she flipped the bird and appeared to sing, "I don't give a (expletive)" at one point, though it was hard to hear her clearly.

"The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans," said Brian McCarthy, spokesman for the NFL, which produced Madonna's halftime show. He said that M.I.A. had not done anything similar during rehearsals and the league had no reason to believe she would pull something like that during the actual show.

The risque moment came during the biggest TV event of the year. The screen briefly went blurred after M.I.A.'s gesture in what was a late attempt - by less than a second - to cut out the camera shot.

"The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show," NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey said. "Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers."

Back in M.I.A.'s native Britain, the London Times noted Monday that while all eyes may have been on Madonna at halftime, "it was the extended middle finger of the British hip-hop star M.I.A. that caused the most controversy." The Guardian wondered whether anyone would really be outraged.

"You'd be forgiven for not having a coronary over the fact M.I.A. gave Super Bowl viewers the finger during her halftime guest spot with Madonna," the newspaper wrote in its music blog. "For most fans, it was probably more shocking to see M.I.A. performing a rehearsed dance routine than flipping the bird."

On Monday morning, host Gretchen Carlson on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" urged M.I.A. to "get a life." Culture vulture Perez Hilton tweeted: "Think she'll ever be invited on live TV again?"

Jackson's infamous oops during the 2004 halftime show raised a storm of controversy and put CBS in hot water with the Federal Communications Commission amid questions about the responsibility of TV networks to police their airwaves.

Justin Timberlake ripped off Jackson's bustier, exposing her breast for nine-sixteenths of a second, a moment for which CBS was fined $550,000 by the FCC. The network challenged the fine and last fall, a federal appeals court ruled against the FCC despite an order from the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The three-judge panel reviewed three decades of FCC rulings and concluded the agency was changing its policy, without warning, by fining CBS for fleeting nudity.

This year's game, in which the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21-17, is expected to challenge last year's record of being the most-watched U.S. TV event ever.

M.I.A. is best known for her 2007 hit "Paper Planes," a Grammy nominee for record of the year that memorably features a sample of the Clash song, "Straight to Hell." It was featured on the soundtrack to the movie "Slumdog Millionaire."

Madonna had admittedly been nervous about her performance, hoping to position herself as the queen of a new generation of pop stars with an opulent show and a sharp performance that mixed her new release with more familiar songs. She seemed like Roman royalty when muscle-bound men carried her extravagant throne across the football field to the stage for her opening song, "Vogue."

Guests Cee Lo, Nicki Minaj and dance rockers LMFAO also appeared with Madonna. The singing and dancing on "Vogue" was smartly choreographed, as Madonna moved more deliberately - she is 53 - but still adroitly. She briefly appeared to stumble at one point while trying to make a step on the stage set, but recovered in time.

She let a tightrope walker make the more acrobatic moves during a performance of "Music."

Madonna carried gold pompons for a performance of her frothy new single. Twitter was alight with questions about the vocals being lip synched or augmented by tapes, particularly during this song.

The best guest was clearly Cee Lo, who joined Madonna for the final song, "Like a Prayer." They were joined by a robed chorus in the show's most soaring performance. With a puff of white smoke, Madonna disappeared down a trapdoor in the stage, and lights on the field spelled out "World Peace."

The performance was also carried live on SiriusXM Radio, giving Madonna the biggest single audience of her career. For all the elaborate choreography and flashy effects, the finger incident is the more likely headline from the event.

Earlier, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert offered some pregame patriotism. Shelton and Lambert did a twangy duet on "America the Beautiful" and Clarkson, in a simple black dress, sang "The Star Spangled Banner" without a hitch after last year's performer, Christina Aguilera, flubbed a line.

(source SI.com)

Tebow-Bill aims to give home-schooled students access to public high school sports - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:45:00.001-03:00

Seventeen-year-old Katie Wormald has more than a passing interest in soccer. She’s been playing since she was 5, plans to compete in college — and maybe earn a business degree to start a soccer-related company.

But because Wormald attends classes in her living room instead of a classroom, she lost a chance to play on a more competitive public high school team. Instead, she plays in recreational leagues, on travel teams and at a small, local private school.

“I was disappointed to not have the opportunities that others did,” the Leesburg teen said.

State legislators are considering whether to allow Virginia’s tens of thousands of home-schooled students to play sports at their local high schools.

The “Tebow bill” — named for Tim Tebow, the starting Denver Broncos quarterback who was home-schooled in Florida but was allowed to play football at his local high school — is making its way through the legislative session.

“They just want to try out,” said the bill’s sponsor, Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Charlottesville), whose younger siblings were home-schooled. “They just want a chance to participate with their friends, their neighbors, their community members.”

But opponents, including some school boards and PTAs, say home-schooled kids are not required to meet the same academic criteria as public school athletes — attend and pass five classes per day — and that they would take team slots from their public school counterparts.

“I don’t like legislating based on what the headline is,’’ said Del. Mark L. Keam (D-Fairfax).

The legislation has been introduced in Virginia since 2005 with little success, but a change in control of the General Assembly to Republicans after November’s elections has supporters hoping the proposal is headed for victory. Some Democrats have opposed the measure because they think it would hurt public schools, a core constituency.

A House of Delegates committee passed the bill last week despite strong and vocal opposition by public school officials and Del. Robert Tata (R-Virginia Beach), the committee chairman, who is nicknamed “Coach” from his days as a high school football coach. The full House is expected to vote this week.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), the father of five children who attended public schools, has said he will sign the bill. “Home-school parents pay taxes like everybody else,” he said recently. “It’s just fair.”

More than 100 people crowded into a hearing room on Capitol Square last week to testify about the bill, many of them dressed-up children who delivered passionate speeches about wanting to play sports on their local school teams.

“Every Friday night I see the lights come on at my local high school and I wonder what it must be like to play in front of a hometown crowd,” said Patrick Foss, 17, of South Riding, ranked as the No. 16 college soccer recruit in the nation this year by ESPN.

Similar legislation has resonated across the nation as home-schooling continues to gain popularity and athletic standouts such as Tebow make headlines.

Sixteen states permit home-schooled students to play sports at public schools, according to the Purcellville-based Home School Legal Defense Association. Nine others leave the decision to localities or do not have laws prohibiting it.

“Home-schoolers are part of our community. To the extent that they pay taxes and contribute to our community, they ought to play sports,’’ said Victoria Cobb, president of the conservative Family Foundation, which lists the bill as one of its top priorities this session.

There’s no estimate on the number of Virginia children who would benefit from the law. State officials calculate that nearly 32,000 of them are home-schooled in Virginia, but the association thinks there are twice as many.

Kids who are home-schooled might be taught by their parents, attend classes with other home-school students in a co-op, take classes online or receive DVD instruction. Others might enroll in a class or two at a private school or community college.

Home-schooled students can play sports in their own leagues, or on recreational and travel teams. But for those who live in less populated areas of the state — and nation — high school sports are often the only game in town.

Matt Keyser and his wife decided to home-school their four kids, now ages 16 to 4, when they moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore because they were not satisfied with public schools. They home-schooled even after they moved to Virginia.

The Keysers’ eldest child, Ethan, has been home-schooled since the second grade. He has played football and lacrosse on recreation and travel teams but wants to compete on more rigorous high school teams. If the legislation is approved, Ethan would be permitted to try out for the lacrosse team at Albemarle High School outside Charlottesville.

“One of the things I think is frustrating is the arbitrary roadblocks that have been put up,” Matt Keyser said. “I think allowing home-schoolers to participate — or try out — will go a long way to bridge gaps and misunderstandings” about home-schooled students.

The bill introduced by Bell bans public schools from partnering with the Virginia High School League — which governs high school activites in the state — because it forbids home-schoolers from playing sports or being involved in other programs such as drama, debate and yearbook. It only pertains to high schools, because children in lower grades are often able to play at their local public schools.

Home-schooled students would have to live in their local school district, try out for teams, and abide by disciplinary and academic criteria just like public school students. But school districts could charge reasonable fees or opt out of the program.

The change would sunset in 2017, and supporters would have to return to the state to reevaluate the situation after four years.

“At the end of that day, the bell rings, they’re responsible for their academic endeavors, and then on to practice and competition,” said Bill Curran, activities director of Fairfax County Public Schools. “It’s an unfair playing field if you don’t have that kind of rigor in your day.”

Wormald knows that even if the law changes this year it will be too late for her to partake in high school sports. But her parents think her four younger siblings might like the chance.

“It just seems like those opportunities should be available to every citizen of the state,” Ed Wormald said.

This article was written by Anita Kumar and appeared in the Washington Post.

Super Bowl XLVI - Most Valuable Endorser of Super Bowl XLVI: Eli Manning - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:38:00.002-03:00

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning not only passed his more celebrated brother in Super Bowl titles with a victory Sunday night over the New England Patriots, but he's also poised to catch up to Peyton Manning on the sports-marketing food chain.

Eli Manning led the Giants on yet another last-minute, fourth-quarter drive en route to a 21-17 win over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. Playing on his brother's turf at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, he earned Most Valuable Player honors and capped his second world title in four years. Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has one Super Bowl victory in two tries.

Now that Eli has separated himself from Peyton in Super Bowl rings, experts say he'll do the same when it comes to endorsements.

"(Eli) goes to the next level as an endorser," said Kevin Adler, founder and president of Chicago-based Engage Marketing.

Eli Manning makes about $7 million annually in endorsements, about half of what Peyton Manning makes. Moreover, Eli Manning's notable national deals with Oreo and DirecTV, as well as his humorous ESPN SportsCenter commercials, have been done in tandem with his brother.

Expect that to change.

"Eli Manning could add as much as $3 million in yearly endorsement earnings," said Bob Dorfman, exec VP-executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco. Mr. Dorfman produces an annual "Sports Marketers' Scouting Report" in which he grades potential breakout endorsement stars. He gave Mr. Manning and New England quarterback Tom Brady "touchdown" potential.

"Eli could easily stand alone, and appeal to a younger demographic, in ads for fast food, video games or manning a smartphone," Mr. Dorfman said. "With Peyton's playing future up in the air, the smart Manning marketing money is on Eli."

Peyton Manning missed the entire past season with a neck injury. He was medically cleared last week by two doctors to resume his career in the fall for the 2012 NFL season, but there are growing indications it won't be with the Indianapolis Colts, the only team he has played for in his 14-year career. The Colts may be looking to rebuild with Stanford University quarterback Andrew Luck, whom Indianapolis could select with the No. 1 pick in the draft in April.

That Eli Manning plays in New York is certainly a bonus for his marketing career, but he has yet to demonstrate Peyton's charisma.

"Peyton's presence relative to Eli's, without regard to performance on the field, is still noticeable," said David Carter, head of the Los Angeles-based Sports Business Group and executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. "He still outshines Eli. There's omething about Peyton that exudes an ability to connect with people; Eli is not quite the captivating presence his older brother is."

Still, a second Super Bowl title and second MVP might catapult Eli Manning further into the marketing realm. Said Bill Glenn, senior VP for Dallas-based The Marketing Arm: "I have the same feeling about that as I do about his fourth-quarter drives -- I definitely like his chances."

(source Ad Week)

Super Bowl XLVI - Viva Las Vegas - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:36:00.002-03:00

It was a Super Bowl Sunday with a familiar feel to it, and not only because quarterback Eli Manning led the underdog New York Giants to a dramatic victory that came down to the game's final play.

The scene inside Las Vegas sports books was predictable, as long lines of football fans snaked to betting windows and cocktail waitresses weaved through traffic to hand out drinks and collect tips.

From the South Point to The Mirage to Red Rock Resort and every other stop on and off the Strip, it was standing-room only by kickoff in the afternoon. Those lucky enough to get a seat in the morning were on the edge of it by the evening.

"The crowds were tremendous," LVH sports book director Jay Kornegay said.

And everyone left entertained, thanks to a fourth quarter that was déjà vu from four years ago.

The Giants, 2½- to 3-point underdogs, upended the New England Patriots 21-17 to win Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Manning directed an 88-yard drive that was capped by Ahmad Bradshaw's 6-yard touchdown run with 57 seconds remaining.

A last-gasp heave from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady fell incomplete in the end zone as time expired, and with that, the year's biggest sports betting event concluded.

The Super Bowl unfolded with a similar theme in 2008, when Manning and the Giants rallied late to upset the Patriots, 17-14. The state's sports books suffered a rare loss on that game.

This time, Kornegay said, his book emerged as a "very small winner" after Giants tickets were paid and the hundreds of proposition bets were posted.

"People were either grumpy or silly happy," Kornegay said.

Jimmy Vaccaro, director of operations for Lucky's sports books, summed up the wagering results the same way, but with a unique analogy.

"We won a ham sandwich after all was said and done," Vaccaro said. "We wrote a lot of tickets and won a few dollars. You just kept writing tickets with the Giants on the money line."

Two hours before the 3:30 p.m. kickoff, a woman was working her way through the South Point sports book, and said, "This is a zoo."

But zoos are generally quiet compared with the controlled riots in the casinos on Sunday, when fans reacted with excitement and disgust on almost every play of a roller-coaster game.

There was a bizarre beginning, with the Giants scoring first on a safety and eventually taking a 9-0 lead, before Brady and the Patriots roared back to go ahead 17-9.

"It was an odd game. There was no flow to it," South Point sports book director Bert Osborne said. "The fourth quarter turned everything around, and it got down to the last play.

"It was kind of hectic. It came out OK, and I think a lot of people were happy."

(source Las Vegas Review Journal)

Madonna acts her age - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:34:00.001-03:00

The bad girl is a grown-up now, like it or not. Madonna, 53, danced her way back toward worldwide visibility Sunday as the halftime attraction for the Super Bowl, with a giant supporting cast — gladiators, acrobats, cheerleaders, drummers, a gospel choir — and a downright benign stance.

She sang about dancing, music, loving and praying, with a little star power on the side. It’s impossible to guess what the Madonna of decades past, fascinated with lust, power, religion and transgression, might have done with this platform. But it’s probably not something the Super Bowl would have booked in the first place.

Madonna has a new album, “MDNA,” coming out next month, her first since “Hard Candy” in 2008. (In 2007, she signed a 10-year partnership with Live Nation reportedly worth $120 million.) A football-themed video clip for her new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” came out Friday, and the song started blasting across the Clear Channel empire of radio stations and billboards worldwide. More than 14 million people were exposed to the song even before the Super Bowl.

For the worldwide audience of her halftime show, Madonna went all out on spectacle; at the Super Bowl, anything less would be dwarfed. She arrived on the field to sing “Vogue” as a gold-robed queen with a platoon of gladiators, dancing on a giant throne and doing precise, right-angle moves amid acrobats from Cirque du Soleil. “Music” brought her to the top of a bleacher-like set surrounded by more acrobatics; soon, she was assisted in cartwheels that had her head-over-heels. The pop duo LMFAO joined her, interspersing their 2011 hit “Party Rock Anthem” and giving Madonna a chance to deliver the line “I’m sexy and I know it” from another LMFAO song.

As a chorus line of cheerleaders filled the stage, Madonna grabbed golden pompoms for “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” which has a handclapping beat reminiscent of Toni Basil’s 1982 “Mickey.” It’s a heavy-handedly self-promoting song — “L-U-V Madonna, Y-O-U you wanna” — that’s second-tier Madonna at best. Guest raps by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. didn’t make the song’s retro-rock any fresher. But M.I.A. offered the Super Bowl set’s glimmer of transgression: Her verse included half of a four-letter word while she raised her middle finger.

The drum corps appeared, with the singer Cee Lo Green, to back Madonna and Green for snippets of her “Open Your Heart” and “Express Yourself.” Then came the reverence in “Like a Prayer,” a song that has shed any hint of double-entendre it might have had when it was released in 1989. A black-and-white-robed choir joined Green and Madonna, who had gotten herself into a long dress. The stadium flickered with white lights, Green belted like a soul-gospel singer and Madonna beamed, on and off her knees, until she disappeared in a blast of smoke, singing, “I hear you call my name and it feels like home.”

Madonna wasn’t the indefatigable trouper of years past. Though she’s still lithe, she measured her moves, letting her supporting cast offer distractions. As she climbed into the bleachers during “Music,” she missed a step, though she recovered fast. At the Super Bowl, Madonna was the party girl turned regent: a queen on her throne, a homecoming queen strutting in the bleachers, a church singer fronting a choir. At the end, the words World Peace glowed from the field in giant letters. Madonna was proffering virtue.

This article was written by Jon Pareles and appeared in the New York Times.

Tom Brady will get another chance at legacy - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:31:00.003-03:00

Tom Brady was one of the last ones out of the shower, perhaps hoping some extra hot water would help take the sting out of a crushing Super Bowl loss. In a nearly deserted New England Patriots [team stats] locker room, he sat wearily pulling on his boots, the pained look on his face never changing.

A few moments earlier, Joe Montana had walked down the hallway just outside, but there would be no meeting of Super Bowl greats. Nor would Brady join Montana in another way, as a four-time NFL champion — something he seemed destined to be at one point in the fourth quarter.

This was not a night when legacies would be debated. That will have to wait for another time, another place, another Super Bowl. For the second time in the last five Super Bowls, Brady had come up oh-so-short, beaten late once again by the New York Giants and another quarterback starting to make a pretty good name for himself, too.

Brady wasn’t going to come out and say it, but he was blaming himself. Had to, because he had the ball in his hand to win the game with 57 seconds left and couldn’t deliver the long touchdown drive that Patriots fans and even his teammates thought would be forthcoming.

"It’s Tom Brady," said Patriots cornerback Kyle Arrington. "A lot of people were thinking whoever had the ball last was going to win."

Not on this night.

The two-point safety on the Brady’s first play of the night turned out to be costly. Without it, the Patriots would have needed just a field goal to win, not a touchdown.

Then there was the catch Wes Welker always makes that he failed to make. It came on a Brady pass with 4 minutes left when it appeared the Patriots were ready to drive for a score that might have put the game away.

It’s a team game, Brady kept repeating afterward. It was the team, he kept saying, that came up short.

"We all wish we could have done a bit more," he said. "That’s what it comes to in football. It always comes down to one or two plays. If you make them you’re celebrating. If you don’t, you don’t sleep for a week."

Brady looked like he surely would be having some sleepless nights. The celebrity quarterback with the celebrity wife sat at a podium afterward, a few days growth of beard on his face and his hair nowhere near perfect. He tried to be philosophical, tried to say all the right things, but there was a certain hollowness to the words and he looked like he would like to be somewhere, anywhere, else.

"We fought to the end and I’m proud of that," he said. "Then we got to the 50 or so and we just ran out of time."

Not before trying one final desperation pass that was batted down in the end zone, just barely out of the reach of Rob Gronkowski. So close — again.

No one even brought up the 16 straight passes Brady completed, breaking the record of 13 straight set by Montana in the 1990 Super Bowl. It was a nice run in the second and third quarters, but nice runs don’t always win games and on this night it was a record Brady would probably just as soon forget.

The one he wanted was four Super Bowl wins by a quarterback, something that would have put him in the elite company of Montana and Terry Bradshaw. Not just for himself, but for a team he has now led to a remarkable five Super Bowl appearances in 11 years.

The safety call for intentional grounding on a pass from the end zone on the first play of the game got the Patriots off on the wrong foot, though Brady wasn’t going to second-guess the official on a ball thrown long over the middle. The Welker play late stung the most, though Brady wasn’t going to second-guess a receiver who usually makes it look so easy the pair often seem to just be playing catch on the field.

Still, it’s got to be the one running through his head as he tosses in bed through the sleepless nights ahead.

Had Welker caught the ball, thrown just a bit high and behind him, the Patriots would have been around the Giants 20 with a two-point lead and the game in hand. Had he caught it in stride, the game likely would have been over right there.

"It came down to one play at the end of the game," Brady said. "If we make it we’re world champions."

A few minutes earlier, Welker had been in the same room, staring straight ahead with reddened eyes. If Brady wasn’t blaming him he was blaming himself, saying that it "comes to the biggest moment of my life and (I) don’t come up with it."

But his quarterback still had his back.

"Wes was running down the field and it looked like they messed the coverage up a little bit and I threw it to him," Brady said. "(He) went up to try and make it, as he always does, and we just couldn’t connect. He’s a hell of a player. I’ll keep throwing the ball to him for as long as I possibly can."

Four years ago in Phoenix, Brady lost his first Super Bowl in four tries in a game that was agonizingly similar to this one. Now he’s lost his last two and, instead of wondering how many he’ll win in his career, people will be wondering if he can win another one — and finally reach that Montana-Bradshaw plateau.

"I’d rather come to this game and lose than not get here," Brady said. "I won’t stop trying to get here."

And a few minutes later he walked out of the stadium with his wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, the dour look still on his face.

Not to worry, though. Even after a loss as heartbreaking as this, the odds still are pretty good that Brady and the Patriots will be back.

This article was written by Tim Dahlberg and appeared in the Boston Herald.

Hello, Hollywood. Need a Follow to ‘Moneyball’? - Ingles

2012-02-07T09:28:00.001-03:00

Jerry Reese has arrived at his second Super Bowl in five years on the job as the Giants’ general manager. If he wins it, might he one day be featured in a book that will be turned into a movie and generate a haul of Academy Award nominations?

“This is a working job, not a come-to-work-at-10-o’clock-and-leave-at-3-to-play-golf job,” he said, shaking his head. In other words, it’s a job about backroom grit, little ancillary glamour.

Reese would not take the bait, speculate on whom could play an African-American man from an impoverished family in tiny Tiptonville, Tenn., who landed in the big town and eventually became a leader among champion Giants.

“Oh, God, I have no idea,” he said, sitting in the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium during the annual crush of humanity and inanity known as Super Bowl media day. “I don’t think anybody wants to play me in a movie.”

Granted, probably not Brad Pitt, up for an Oscar for his brooding “Moneyball” portrayal of baseball’s Billy Beane. But John Mara, a Giants co-owner, begged to differ.

“I’m trying to think of some interesting general managers out there that it would be worth making a movie of — not too many, to tell you the truth,” Mara said. “But Jerry, he’s got a pretty compelling life story, growing up in the situation that he did. He’s the old-fashioned American dream, started at the bottom and worked his way up to the general manager of a team in the Super Bowl.”

Make it two Super Bowls, as Reese — who as a rookie G.M. ruined Bill Belichick’s run at perfection in Super Bowl XLII — has another opportunity to beat the biggest of all N.F.L. brains and his New England Patriots here Sunday. Reese said he might let loose should the Giants reprise their victory in Arizona of four years ago and actually put off watching college draft prospects on video for 24 to 48 hours.

“That’s what we do, what the job is, roll your sleeves up, because there’s a lot of players you have to deal with, a lot of contracts, a lot of personalities,” he said. “And, uh, I love it.”

He loves the material that would make any name director scream, “Cut,” and send the script back for rewrite. But it’s a fair study of N.F.L. executive realism.

Baseball has Oakland’s transcendent Beane. It has Theo Epstein, formerly the prince of Boston and now of Chicago; and the Yankees’ Brian Cashman, known for rappelling down the side of a building and surviving Mount Steinbrenner. N.B.A. front offices have been manned by the headline-producing Jerry West, Larry Bird, Pat Riley and Isiah Thomas.

But N.F.L. general managers are stealth operators, obscured by the coach who dons the headset and inevitably wears the crown. Even the cranky Tom Coughlin moved Eli Manning to respond promptly when asked who might play the Giants’ front man in a feature film.

“I’d have to say Gene Hackman,” Manning said, admittedly inspired by Indiana’s film history with “Hoosiers.”

In the case of Belichick, he is so much the master of his three-Super-Bowl-ring circus that the organization doesn’t even include the title of general manager on its front-office roster.

“We did in the earlier years, but you have to build an organization around the talent you have,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert K. Kraft, said. “And after being exposed to Bill the first three to four years as a head coach, I was quite comfortable letting him have more and more autonomy.”

With autonomy comes acclaim for the Patriots’ serial success. Over the last 11 years, they have averaged a shade under four regular-season defeats, winning 3 of the 4 Super Bowls they played while continually remaking their roster, with the notable exception of quarterback Tom Brady.

Is it really possible that Belichick has done all the coaching and achieved so much administratively without some truly expert assistance or direction?

We know Scott Pioli, Belichick’s former front-office guru, was widely respected within the sport. The Patriots currently list Nick Caserio as the director of player personnel, but so invisible was Caserio on Tuesday that a search for him was abandoned when Bob Ryan, the Boston Globe columnist, more or less admitted he wouldn’t know Caserio if he were tackled by him.

We can easily make the case that, exact title aside, the lead personnel position in the N.F.L. is the most daunting in all team sports. There are twice as many players to sign as in baseball, injuries are chronic and a hard salary cap creates chess to everyone else’s checkers.

Reese said he couldn’t imagine there being enough time to do both jobs, while Mara paid homage to Belichick, his one-time assistant coach, by saying: “There are only so many Bill Belichicks in the world. But I feel that when you have that separation of power, in the long term, it’s better for the organization.”

Some would argue that Reese inherited his first title team when Ernie Accorsi retired as the general manager in 2007. But Reese made difficult contract decisions that year and maybe the most crucial call of all: persuading Coughlin to look in the mirror and lighten up.

This time around, Reese’s draft picks (led by Jason Pierre-Paul ) and free-agent pickups (notably Victor Cruz) have powered the Giants from late-season mediocrity to the threshold of immortality. Once again, they are staring down Belichick and Brady in a rematch that already feels like the stuff of literary legend.

Billy Beane never did win it all. If the Giants triumph Sunday, we nominate Don Cheadle to play Reese in the movie.

(source New York Times)

SUPER BOWL XLVI MOST-WATCHED TV SHOW OF ALL TIME - Ingles

2012-02-07T08:51:00.002-03:00

166.8 MILLION TOTAL VIEWERS
SUPER BOWLS RANK AS TV’S TOP 21 SHOWS

The 2011 NFL season concluded with another television milestone as Super Bowl XLVI on NBC reached a total audience of 166.8 million viewers, making it the most-watched show in U.S. television history according to The Nielsen Company.

The Giants-Patriots championship game topped the previous record of 162.9 million total viewers set last year (Packers-Steelers in Super Bowl XLV) and marks the fifth consecutive record-setting total audience for the Super Bowl. Super Bowls account for the 21 most-watched programs in history in terms of total audience.

Most-Watched TV Programs, Total Viewers

Game-Total Viewers
Super Bowl XLVI (Giants-Patriots), 2/5/12
166.8 million
Super Bowl XLV (Packers-Steelers), 2/6/11
162.9 million
Super Bowl XLIV (Colts-Saints), 2/7/10
153.4 million
Super Bowl XLIII (Cardinals-Steelers), 2/1/09
151.6 million
Super Bowl XLII (Giants-Patriots), 2/3/08
148.3 million

Source: NFL, The Nielsen Company

In addition, a record average of 111.3 million viewers watched Super Bowl XLVI – topping the previous mark of 111 million for Super Bowl XLV.

Rams halt sales for London game - ingles

2012-02-06T19:00:00.002-03:00

The NFL is continuing a temporary postponement of ticket sales for the Rams' Oct. 28 game against New England at Wembley Stadium in London.

According to the NFLUK website, the reason for the postponement "is to allow the Rams and their stadium authority time to finalise the technical amendments to the lease required under the terms of the Rams' commitment to London."

As the Convention and Visitors Commission pointed out in a statement released a week ago, the current stadium lease at the Edward Jones Dome does not allow the Rams to play regular-season games anywhere but in the dome.

On Friday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the game in London would be played in 2012, indicating that another team would replace the Rams if they can't resolve their lease issues on the matter. Jacksonville owner Shahid Khan, who unsuccessfully bid to purchase the Rams in 2010, said the Jaguars would be interested in playing in London if the Rams couldn't participate in the game.

A league official told the Post-Dispatch on Friday there was no specific timetable on when the NFL needed to know whether the Rams would play in London. The official said the league was optimistic the issue would be resolved very soon.

(source St. Louis Post Dispatch)

Texans raise ticket prices following first trip to playoffs - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:58:00.002-03:00

The best season in Texans history comes with a higher price tag.

The team announced late Friday that the average general ticket price will increase by 8.5 percent – from $72.47 to $78.66 – for the 2012 season.

Nearly all of the seating locations at 71,054-seat Reliant Stadium will have a price increase between $3 to $10.

The price change is the first for the Texans in two years and follows the first AFC South title and playoff win in team history.

John Schriever, the Texans’ vice-president of ticketing and event services, said the price increase is necessary for the team to generate revenues that “keep pace with our competition.”

“Our fans have created one of the best home-field advantages in the NFL, as anyone who saw the wild-card game (a 31-10 win over Cincinnati) can attest,” Schriever said in a statement. “We want to continue to make our games accessible to a broad audience while still pricing in a manner that reflects the strong demand for our tickets.

“Fielding a championship-caliber team and delivering a world-class experience for our fans requires us to generate revenues that keep pace with our competition.”

The Texans’ average ticket price ranked eighth among 12 playoff teams this season, the team said. The team anticipates being in the bottom half of the 32 NFL teams in ticket prices when those figures are released sometime next season.

Of the 13 seating locations at Reliant Stadium, all but one will see a price increase. The biggest increase will be in the Field Level Prime 1 and 2 seating located between the 20-yard lines on both sides. Those tickets will each increase $10 to $130 and $120, respectively.

Field Level End Zone seating will jump 11.43 percent – from $70 to $78. Tickets in the Field Level Corner will increase 10.39 percent from $77 to $85.

The only seating location not affected will be the Gridiron Terrace, the lowest-priced tickets located in the upper end zone that will remain $30.

Next season’s home schedule will include the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Ravens, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings and AFC South rivals Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars.

The Texans have sold out 101 consecutive games at Reliant Stadium, the longest streak of any professional sports team in the city’s history.

Season-ticket holders accounted for more than 97 percent of the tickets sold to the general public for the Texans’ wild-card playoff game, according to the team.

Any payments made for a potential AFC championship game will be applied to 2012 season-ticket payments, with the remaining balance prorated over four payments.

To join the Texans’ priority wait list for season tickets call 866-GOTEXANS or visit www.HoustonTexans.com

(source Houston Chronicle)

A weather proof Super Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:56:00.001-03:00

It turns out that February in the city they call Naptown hasn’t been boring or forbidding, beyond the developing storm between the hometown Colts and their iconic quarterback. Fortunately, the issue of Peyton Manning’s future in football will have to wait until after his little brother, Eli, takes aim again at Tom Brady on Sunday under the protective dome of Lucas Oil Stadium.

In the unseasonably warm days leading to Super Bowl XLVI, growing crowds poured into this once sleepy but handsomely developed downtown to play in the N.F.L. theme park and possibly catch a glimpse of a few Giants or Patriots on the way out to eat.

“Can’t believe this weather,” said Lee Parsons, a local resident, who was on Capitol Avenue on Friday morning, under the popular zip line, with a friend, Larry Rees, who was visiting from Dayton, Ohio. “A year ago this week, we had a major ice storm.”

Parsons, who didn’t have tickets for Sunday’s game, said that even better than the weather was the timing of the event that, in the self-congratulatory words of N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, “put Indianapolis on the global stage.”

“Maybe it’ll make people forget that Indiana passed a right-to-work law, which some of us are embarrassed by,” Parsons said.

Actually, you couldn’t miss demonstrating union workers on Wednesday, when Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into effect the law, which drew a public rebuke from DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the N.F.L. Players Association.

Smith also joined local union leaders protesting proposed layoffs at a downtown hotel Friday. Some league folks worried that the host city would be embarrassed, but Smith’s willingness to sprinkle a dose of real-world reality on the N.F.L’s annual orgy of sun-baked excess was not a bad move. The Super Bowl does live in America.

Indianapolis isn’t the first wintry city to host the game — Dallas had an ice storm last year after the Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, neglected to build a roof over the entire metroplex. But for those of us who didn’t make it to Michigan in 1982 and 2006 or Minneapolis in 1992, Indianapolis has made a convincing argument for the N.F.L. to spread its wealth around, with the understanding that climate change is a long-term trend and Mother Nature might demand that we clomp around next time in boots. Football players are no more uniform in their opinions than the rest of us, but a sampling of them seemed to suggest they were feeling and appreciating the energy of a galvanized community.

“We were kind of isolated four years ago, but it’s been nice here,” said Giants guard Chris Snee, referring to Giants-Patriots I, played in Glendale, Ariz., outside Phoenix. “We go out, have dinner. You feel like you’re in the middle of everything.”

So hunkered down in this convenient, walkable city were the Giants and the Patriots that neither team indicated an intention to change hotels Saturday to ensure that the night before the game would be free of distraction and temptation. Both teams had apparently grown fond of the few minutes’ commute.

In Goodell’s league, taxpayers help underwrite football palaces like Lucas Oil Stadium, and then loyal fans are cruelly gouged with personal seat licenses, but he deserves credit for his willingness to occasionally move America’s most celebrated and watched spectacle out of its comfort zone.

By putting it outdoors in New Jersey two years from now, Goodell knows he eventually will have to answer to other member cities with uncovered fields. Assuming only snow, not the sky itself, falls on MetLife Stadium in 2014, why shouldn’t a Super Bowl be awarded to Denver, Philadelphia or Chicago, among others?

“I’m a big believer that the game of football is played in all elements,” Goodell said. “Some of them are our classic games, were played in snow or ice or cold. We do have another side, which is they believe that when you get to the Super Bowl, it should be played in conditions that are not impacted by weather.”

We suspect that a majority of those people are not hard-core fans who bundle up to tailgate in Foxborough or Green Bay, mainly those who can afford the junket expenditure of getting to one of the traditional Super Bowl sites.

“Let’s face it, always having it in the warm-weather city kind of betrays the game of football as a whole,” Giants offensive tackle Kareem McKenzie said. “Just because it might be 20 degrees below zero in a cold-weather city, they don’t cancel the game, do they? If they can play an N.F.C. title game in Green Bay, why not have the same conditions for the Super Bowl?”

Matt Light, a veteran Patriots tackle, had a similar take.

“Play the Super Bowl in the snow?” he said. “It’s not something that players haven’t done before. It’s great for people all over to get to experience everything the way New Orleans has many times, and Miami, San Diego and all that.”

Of course, linemen don’t have to grip the ball in frigid temperatures and throw it with precision, the way Brady and Eli Manning will have to Sunday night in the house made famous by Peyton. If both quarterbacks are on their game, we could get another classic, albeit of the controlled-climate variety.

(source New York Times)

Institute seeks 'hit count' for kids to prevent brain issues - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:54:00.001-03:00

Major League Baseball uses pitch counts to protect multi-million dollar arms. In Little League, pitch counts are part of the rules to protect young arms. A campaign launched Friday aims to introduce a "Hit Count" in youth football and other sports to safeguard young brains.

"These concepts really should be adopted not just for the elbow but for the brain," said Chris Nowinski, CEO of the Boston-based Sports Legacy Institute, founded in 2007 to promote brain health at all levels of sports.

The institute held a press conference at the Super Bowl XLVI media center, where earlier Friday, concussion issues in NFL were a prime topic at Commissioner Roger Goodell's press conference.

"This is not the NFL," says Colts C Jeff Saturday, who joined in the announcement. "We have to make sure that our kids understand that this isn't TV. There are 25 parents who are watching you, and we all love you if you win or lose."

Nowinski, a former Harvard football lineman, said the plan in the coming year is to conduct roundtables discussion with concussion experts, with youth sports organizations and with companies doing research on technological advances to record hits.

"The gameplan is to get this adopted hopefully by youth sports organizations by 2013," said Nowinski.

The aim is to eventually specify the numbers of hits to the head a youngster can take not only in football but other sports such as soccer and lacrosse. There would be hit counts per season and per year because so many children play multiple sports.

"Put a number on paper. How many times should a six-year-old be allowed to be hit in the head?" said Nowinski. "I don't know (which sports group is) going to put that first stake in the ground and put a number on paper. ... (But) the number should definitely be lower."

There are already sensors in football helmets, mouthguards and helmet ear pieces that can used to measure impacts. The NFL is currently testing the sensors with an eye toward using them to study the effects of hits to the head on pro players.

Would the expense of that rule it out for youth sports?

"The idea is that this can be accomplished with and without technology," said Nowinski. "Not every hit can be counted in a football game by looking. So we do know multiple companies that have products in development that will be able to actually count hits.''

And who knows where technology will go.

"Part of the reason I'm talking about this now is so that they can develop those technologies that are able to give that information to parents in real time on the sideline," said Nowinski. "So that when you pick up your child from practice and your iPad app says, 'Wow, you took 100 blows to the head today. I want to talk to your coach about what he was doing.' "

Nowinski also said that based on the nature of certain football drills, for example, estimates could be made of how many hits to the head a player might take during a certain drill.

Nowinski noted that the new contract between the NFL and and the players union put limits this season on how many times pro teams could conduct full pads practices this season.

"If they can admit they don't need all those hits to the head, I think we can put that at the lower levels (of football)," he said.

As a member of the executive committee of the NFLPA, Saturday helped negotiate those limits. He also is the father of two sons and a daughter who play youth sports.

He said he told one of his sons that he couldn't play padded football until he was 11. He recounted what he tells his children about kids' sports.

"This is not your job," said Saturday. "Daddy's job is I go out and I put myself in a position that's probably not the smartest, but I have a high-risk, high-reward job.

"This is not a job for you. This is an enjoyment sport that I want you to learn and have fun and play with your friend. If you're ever scared and you don't want to do it, don't take a shot. Don't put your head in there and go make the tackle. Let it go. It's not a big deal."

This article was written by Gary Mihoces and appeared in USA Today.

The NFL has an 'L' of a problem - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:52:00.001-03:00

The NFL is four years away from its 50th Super Bowl, which means it is already trying to plan around a peculiar self-inflicted marketing nuisance: How can the world's most powerful sports league get around putting a big, fat "L" on hundreds of thousands of souvenir T-shirts?

The first thing the winning players will do when Sunday's game ends is drape themselves in celebratory gear emblazoned with the Super Bowl logo. This year, that logo consists of the Lombardi Trophy above the silver Roman numerals XLVI.

But come 2016, the Roman numeral for Super Bowl L happens to be the lone letter that most connotes losing.

"Wouldn't that be a nice time to switch over to Arabic numerals?" said Bob Dorfman, the executive creative director for Baker Street Advertising.

This enormous American sporting event is the only spectacle of its kind that takes its nomenclature from the ancient Romans. Former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle never could have imagined the behemoth that is the modern NFL when he resorted to these numerals in 1971 for Super Bowl V. Back then, they helped distinguish between the different calendar years of the regular season and the Super Bowl while adding an air of grandiosity to the fledgling championship.

The NFL is four years away from its 50th Super Bowl. How can the NFL get around putting a big, fat "L" on hundreds of thousands of souvenir T-shirts? Ben Cohen joins digits. Photo: Getty Images.

The NFL has come a long way since the days when the Super Bowl needed an injection of hype. Now the Roman numerals are "part of the mystique of the Super Bowl," said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy.

Even more unlikely than the Super Bowl's ascent to the top of the annual TV ratings chart is the fact that the league is dealing with a problem that's been made infinitely worse by a show about a high-school glee club.

In the 2003 book "Field Guide to Gestures," the "loser gesture" was referenced as forming the letter L on your forehead with your index finger and thumb. The book offered a five-step primer that ended: "Say 'loser' with derision, generally elongating the first syllable."

The sign has perpetuated in movies and TV shows since at least the 1990s. The book traced the lineage to the 1994 movie "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," starring Jim Carrey. A year earlier, the L had a cameo in "The Sandlot," in which the bespectacled baseball player Michael "Squints" Palledorous referred to another character as an "L-7 weenie" as he formed a diamond with two Ls. Kelly Preston's character famously made the sign to Tom Cruise in 1996's "Jerry Maguire." And the poster for the 2000 movie "Loser" depicted Jason Biggs showing off the L on his own forehead while wearing a fur-trapper hat.

Most recently, the symbol was featured in promotional materials for "Glee" and has become something like a secret handshake for "Gleeks" since the show's 2009 premiere.

The gesture is so universal that some brand experts believe the 50th Super Bowl might emphasize those pleasingly round Arabic numerals more than the traditional Roman ones.

"Who knows? They may not use the L," said Tony Ponturo, the CEO of Ponturo Management Group, a sports consulting firm. "I don't think they'll walk away from the L, but I have a feeling they'll figure out a way to incorporate the 50th anniversary."

The NFL hasn't announced the host city for the 50th Super Bowl, but it has begun talks about Super Bowl L and "those types of details," McCarthy said. He added: "I'm doing that signal to my friend right now."
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The official Super Bowl logo has evolved over the years from a simple text logo to a graphical multicolor concoction. Last year, for the first time, the Lombardi Trophy was incorporated into the insignia. It was included again this time.

In the next four years, the NFL may unearth new means of interpretation for the L. McCarthy dryly noted it could stand for "learning" or "love." Just as Super Bowl XL in 2006 was tailor-made for apparel, Dorfman suggested the NFL could spin Super Bowl L as the largest Super Bowl ever.

Then there is the option of awarding Super Bowl L to a city that might integrate the Roman numeral into a logo. Colts owner Jim Irsay said this week that London remained a possibility for Super Bowl L. The site of the first Super Bowl, Los Angeles, currently lacks an NFL franchise but is considered a contender for the 2016 game. "We're well aware of where the first Super Bowl was held," McCarthy said.
NFL Playoff Dossiers

This won't be the first time the NFL has tackled issues pertaining to Roman numerals. In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act, a law that required schools and libraries to censor parts of the Web, even as librarians pointed to filters that blocked searches for Super Bowl XXX. There is nothing sexy-sounding about Super Bowl XLVI, but the longest sequence of Roman numerals in the game's history, XXXVIII in 2004, produced a game between the Panthers and Patriots that was arguably one of the best ever.

One outfit that won't have to worry about the L is Reebok. The Adidas subsidiary will be replaced after this Super Bowl by Nike, which declined to comment about its future partnership with the NFL, as the official manufacturer of league apparel.

"L standing for loser with a Nike swoosh right above it—I love that," said Blake Lundberg, general manager of Adidas' sports licensed division.

This article was written by Ben Cohen and appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Denver deserves to host Super Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:50:00.001-03:00

Once in our lifetime, the greatest sporting event in America needs to be played in the best sports city in the country.

Bring the Super Bowl to Denver.

"We are a city worthy of hosting the Super Bowl," Broncos president Joe Ellis said Wednesday. "It's definitely something we're looking at."

While it should be noted that the No. 1 priority of the Broncos is getting back to the NFL championship game, regardless of where it's played, having the world's biggest football party in the backyard of franchise owner Pat Bowlen would be a fitting tribute to this sports-crazy town and his decades of commitment to the league.

Before a formal bid is formulated, the Broncos would need to measure interest from civic leaders and the costs involved. But what is the biggest challenge to Denver as host of the Super Bowl?

"The climate is an issue," Ellis said, talking to me as he traveled down the highway to Denver International Airport, with a view of snow on Mount Evans over his left shoulder.

Ten years ago, it would have been a crazy pipe dream to envision a Super Bowl played with the Rocky Mountains as the backdrop. But during the past decade, it seems as if the NFL's marquee event has made almost as many tour stops across the nation as U2.

From a Motor City trying to get economic traction to a parking lot somewhere off a freeway in sprawling Houston, from a house as big as the ego of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and back home again in Indiana, the Super Bowl has been everywhere, man.

Twenty years ago, when Minneapolis played host to the championship game, the Super Bowl lost its fear of being a winter carnival. But league policy mandates the host city have an average game-day temperature of at least 50 degrees or a dome to provide a roof over the heads of star quarterbacks.

What Ellis hopes will allow Denver to get a foot in the door is the exception the NFL granted to the New York metropolitan market to play the 2014 Super Bowl in a new outdoor stadium. The Broncos will actively monitor league reaction to championship football played in elements that the late, great Bronko Nagurski would have loved.

A game in the snow could make for such compelling television that the commercials might again become secondary to blocking and tackling. But for the CEOs and starlets who fly on private jets to see and be seen at the Super Bowl? The beautiful people might not like slush leaving stains on those UGG boots.

"How the league would feel about a Super Bowl played in a driving blizzard when fans are paying thousands of dollars to attend the game remains to be seen," said Ellis, aware that if the big game were in Denver this week, New England coach Bill Belichick might be scowling at a winter storm warning in the forecast. An expanded, 18-game, regular-season schedule in the league's future might help push the dream of a Super Bowl in Colorado closer to reality by moving the championship further from the dead of winter.

Super Bowl sites are evaluated by a six-person committee that currently includes Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, the host of this year's event, as well as representatives from the Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills. Hey, it snows in all those cities, doesn't it?

It's clear the Broncos believe they could make a compelling sales pitch. But putting together a bid would not be taken lightly.

"There's a lot of money invested on the come to bid on this game and not win it," Ellis said. "I know our fans are more interested in the team spending money to acquire good players for the Broncos rather than spending money to acquire the Super Bowl for Denver. And we agree."

With sites awarded three years in advance and the experiment of an outdoor venue in New Jersey 24 months away, the earliest we could realistically see the championship game in Denver would be late in this decade. But look on the bright side. That timetable would allow Tim Tebow to mature fully as a quarterback. Am I right?

The Super Bowl could make Colorado the center of the sports universe for a week, without as much fuss, the massive infrastructure expenses or all the mud tracked around the state that a successful bid for the Winter Olympics would bring.

"Who wouldn't want the Super Bowl?" Ellis said. "I think it would be great for Denver, and our city deserves an event like that."

This article was written by Mark Kiszla and appeared in the Denver Post.

Are the Cowboys still America's team? - Ingles

2012-02-06T18:48:00.002-03:00

It's inevitable: Somebody this week will argue that the New England Patriots have become America's Team.

Meanwhile, about 200 miles down Interstate 95, somebody else will argue that the New York Giants have become America's Team. In addition to indignant cynicism and feigned passion, the arguments will have this in common: They'll insist that the Dallas Cowboys, who have borne the nickname for more than 30 years, are no longer America's Team.

But, of course, such arguments, which seem to come around every other football season or so and to be pullulating this year because of a recent poll, are 24-karat flapdoodle, sterling nonsense, pure piffle. The Cowboys are America's Team forever.

As Bob Ryan, vice president and editor-in-chief of NFL Films, pointed out, a nickname is non-transferable. It's like an airline ticket. It can be momentarily misplaced, even stuffed into a drawer beneath a pile of socks, but it can't be used by anybody else.

"There's never going to be another Galloping Ghost, or another defensive line that's the Purple People Eaters," Ryan said, without having to add that there will never be another America's Team. "You can't transfer a nickname. It can't happen."

And Ryan should know. He coined the Cowboys' famous nickname while editing the team's highlight film for the 1978 season, which concluded in Miami with a Super Bowl loss to the Steelers. Ryan said he was searching for something positive to say that wouldn't get mired in the disappointment of the loss, for a telling and original observation about a Cowboys team that already had won two Super Bowls.

"They appear on television so often their faces are as familiar to the public as presidents and movie stars," said the narrator, John Facenda, in the introduction to the film. "They are the Dallas Cowboys, 'America's Team.'"

The team's popularity inspired the nickname. Just as football exploded in the popular awareness and into the cultural mainstream, the Cowboys became, with their relentless success, the most popular team in the NFL. In 1978, with a 12-4 record, they enjoyed their 13th consecutive winning season. (They would have seven more, an unprecedented streak, before going 7-9 in 1986.)

Those Cowboys, Ryan said, appeared more frequently than any other team on national television, had the most visible players and sold the most merchandise. Their popularity crossed regional borders, it veritably soared, and their fan base became national. Wherever they played, from New York to California, the Cowboys attracted large gatherings. At hotels and stadiums, fans proudly donned the silver and blue to make a chromatic statement of their loyalty.

And so when the Cowboys were introduced as "America's Team" in a nationally televised game the next season, the nickname was all theirs, appropriately and inseparably. But it wasn't just the team's popularity that made the nickname stick.

Bigger in Texas

Sport thrives on competition, but its significance derives from cultural metaphor. In April 1978, the wildly successful series Dallas first appeared on television. In every sense, it was big. It celebrated the city as a place of big possibilities, big successes, big risks and big conflicts, a centrally located conurbation where everything came together in a distillation of America. Only here could there be America's Team.

And this Cowboys team, which was both daring and innovative, this team with the pristine logo, a blue star suggestive of independence and individuality, had become a symbol not just for winning but for progress. The Cowboys had a history of drafting from small colleges obscure players who went on to NFL success and for taking chances on athletes with little experience. Only a few years earlier (1965-1974), an Olympic champion, Bob Hayes, had returned punts and caught passes for the Cowboys. It probably helped, too, that the cowboy was an iconic figure in American history. And then there was the quarterback.

A Heisman Trophy winner from Annapolis whose Navy service included a tour of duty in Vietnam, Roger Staubach was an American hero long before he joined the Cowboys. With a famous "Hail Mary Pass" to beat the Vikings in 1975 and two Super Bowl victories, of course he played for America's Team, as if he could have played for any other.

Staubach said he recalls finding "hotels packed with Cowboys fans" whenever the team traveled. And for some road games, the Cowboys would have nearly as many supporters in the stadium as the home team. But the moniker wasn't something the team conferred on itself or at the time even liked, Staubach said, and Coach Tom Landry, who didn't condone boasting or "mouthing off," didn't talk about the Cowboys' being America's Team. But Tex Schramm, the team's president and general manager who was famous for his innovative ideas and promotional talents, was probably more receptive.

"Knowing coach Landry, I don't think he would have chosen that," Staubach said about the nickname. "I think Tex liked the idea, but as for the players, it didn't help us."

The nickname had a polarizing effect. Fans who didn't embrace America's Team could only resent the nickname and what it suggested. Opposing players resented it, too. When the Cowboys went to Philadelphia in December 1979, linebacker Bill Bergey broke through the line on a blitz, Staubach recalled, and sent him crashing to the ground.

"Take that, America's quarterback," Bergey said, as Staubach remembered the play and its aftermath. The Cowboys, by the way, won 24-17.

Poll is pro Packers

The nickname still polarizes apparently, which might explain the poll released Dec. 21 by Public Policy Polling. Of the 700 people asked to identify their favorite football team, 22 percent said the Green Bay Packers; 11 percent the Dallas Cowboys, followed by the Giants, Bears and Steelers, all at 8 percent; the Saints at 7 percent; and the Patriots at 6 percent. The poll, in other words, found the Packers to be, by far, the most popular professional football team in the country.

On the other hand, the poll found the Cowboys to be the team liked least. When asked to identify their least favorite team, 22 percent said the Cowboys, followed by the Bears at 11 percent and the Packers at 8 percent.

When the poll was taken (Dec. 16-18), the Cowboys had just lost, in a spectacularly inglorious fourth-quarter meltdown, to the Giants, and the Packers were 13-0, but about to lose for the first time this year, on Dec. 18, to the Chiefs. Could the recent games have affected the results? Probably, but that didn't stop anybody from leaping to a favorite conclusion.

The Patriots have a claim to America's Team, having "dominated" the NFL for the first decade of the new millennium; the Packers are America's Team because of their poll-proven popularity and because they're owned by more than 112,000 shareholders; the Steelers are America's Team because, after all, they've won six Super Bowls -- and so go the arguments, all of them insisting that the Cowboys have lost the nickname as well as their mojo.

Roland Martin, a CNN commentator who usually confines his partisan effusions to politics, went so far as to call the "bumbling Cowboys" a "has-been team." Far from being America's Team, the Cowboys aren't even Texas' team, according to Martin at CNN.com. "Football power in Texas," he said, "has shifted to Houston," which must be a happy coincidence for him because he lives there.

And in the New York Daily News, under a headline oozing adolescent pique ("Calling Cowboys 'America's Team' a joke"), while pointing to only two playoff victories in 16 years, Gary Myers wrote, "There needs to be an expiration date on the Cowboys being known as America's Team. And it needs to be soon."

Really?

This sort of protest has surfaced with regularity over the years, proving perhaps that flapdoodle's nothing if not buoyant. In the early 1980s, Sports Illustrated, in a tribute to the power of cable television, called the Atlanta Braves "America's Team," in the 1990s coach Marv Levy, showing the conspicuous symptoms of nickname-envy, gave his Buffalo Bills the moniker, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers have sometimes jumped into the discussion, and a few years ago, when they seemed to have pulled an entire city back from the brink of the apocalypse, the Saints became, at the very least, a special team.

"Every few years, I get a call from somebody who wants to question whether the Cowboys are America's Team," said Rich Dalrymple, the Cowboys' vice president of public relations. "But it's not for us to say. It's not a title the team asked for or ever actively promoted."

But, Dalrymple conceded, it's a title, or nickname, that seems to stay here, with the Cowboys. And even if nicknames were transferable (but they're not), the Cowboys would be America's Team and the nickname would endure because it's still relevant, still descriptive, still true. America has an emotional investment in the Cowboys, and that as much as anything makes them America's Team.

Tops in Harris Poll

Last September, the Harris Poll surveyed 2,462 adults -- as opposed to 700 in December, near the end of the season -- and asked them to rank their favorite NFL teams. For the fifth consecutive year and the 13th time in 20 years, the Cowboys were No. 1. They've never been worse than fourth in the Harris Poll, according to Sports Business Journal.

In 2010, the Nielsen Co. devised what it called the Sports Media Exposure Index to measure popularity. The company based its index on local and national television ratings, mentions on the Internet and visits to the teams' official websites. Nielsen found the Cowboys to be the clear leader, or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the research confirmed that America's Team is "America's Team." And not only were the Cowboys No. 1 on the Sports Media Exposure Index, but they were 23 percent more popular than the No. 2 team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Despite frustrations on the field in recent years, the Cowboys' popularity hasn't waned noticeably. Ryan pointed out that even this year, "when the team was just a little better than mediocre," the Cowboys remained the most popular team on television.

The Thanksgiving Day victory over the Dolphins was the most-watched game of the regular season; in fact, with 31 million viewers, it was the most-watched program. Three of the 10 most popular programs were indeed Cowboys' games. With 27.6 million viewers according to Nielsen, the finale against the Giants was the most-watched regular-season primetime game in 15 years and the most-watched primetime game ever on NBC. And with 17.1 million viewers, the Cowboys' Monday night game against the Redskins was the most-watched program on cable television.

As for embracing bold innovation, these Cowboys could be the most American of America's Teams. They play, after all, in the largest air-conditioned space in the world, beneath the largest television in the world, in a $1.2 billion monument to boldness.

And so don't accept impostors or substitutes. Don't consign the nickname to the trash, or put it in the freezer or hide it in a drawer beneath the old socks. The Cowboys, Staubach said, are still America's Team. And America's quarterback is right. Yes, amid dubious poll results and pullulating flapdoodle and perennial piffle, America's Team still stands out.

(source Fort Worth Star Telegram)

Comerciales en el Super Bowl XLVI

2012-02-06T15:18:00.001-03:00

http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/46/commercials?module=HP11_hot_topics#video=09000d5d826a1508

Trophy & MVP Award Presentation - Ingles

2012-02-06T09:09:00.002-03:00

Commissioner of the NFL: Roger Goodell
“It has been an extraordinary NFL season for our fans. You deserve it and we thank you very much for the support. Tonight’s game was a fitting end to that season and an extraordinary game tonight and a great ending. To the Giants; to the Mara and Tisch family, you’re now world champions once again, congratulations.”

Giants President & CEO: John K. Mara
(on getting used to winning the Super Bowl)
“No, you never get use to this, but I want to tell you one thing. A lot of teams around the country know what great fan support they have, but we know who the most loyal fans in the league are: Giants fans, and this is for you.”

(on a possible coaching change during the season)
“Well, that’s just part of this business. But listen, there’s not one coach in the league that I would trade Tom Coughlin for. We are blessed to have him and he’s a two-time world champion.”

Giants Chairman & Executive Vice President: Steve Tisch
(on winning twice within four years)
“I’ve never been involved with a group of guys who have played with more heart, more passion and more love for each other and for the game of football. We’ve got the greatest fans in the world, the greatest players in the world, an unbelievable coach in Tom Coughlin and I want everybody in New York, New Jersey around the world, this is for you guys. This team bled their hearts out for you.”

(on the close game)
“What a game. I mean, I thought four years ago was exciting – that was a dress rehearsal. This was one of the greatest football games I’ve ever seen and to share it with the city of Indianapolis – they did an amazing job and we just want to thank everybody. I’m looking at my players right now and I’ve never seen smiles that big.”

Giants Head Coach: Tom Coughlin
(Congratulations)
“Thank you. We share this with all the players, all the coaches, all the people that really did a tremendous job to get us here. To play against a great team like the Patriots and to have a finish like that that goes down in history, that’s a marvelous feeling.”

(on what he told the team going into half time down by a point)
“We had a couple penalties that I thought took points off the board for us there in the first half, but when we got in for half time I said, ‘we can play better than this, guys. We are better than this’, and everybody agreed and kind of got energized again and came out with convention and the rest is history.”

(on being a two-time Super Bowl Champion following mentor Bill Parcells)
“Well, I’m not about comparisons or anything of that nature, I’m very thankful and very grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had as a head coach of the New York Giants. The wonderful players I’ve had worked with, the coaches that have surrounded us and the support from ownership, that’s what this is all about.”

Giants QB: Eli Manning
(on being the MVP)
“It’s been a wild day. It’s been a wild season, but we have a great, tough bunch of guys – guys that never quit and that have great faith in each other and I’m just proud of our team and the way we’ve dealt with everything all season and came out strong.”

(on thinking you could be in trouble when down in the game)
“No, [we] stayed positive and I knew offensively we were moving the ball, we just weren’t getting touchdowns. We kept getting close, but our defense we playing tough and I knew eventually they would get a turnover and get us a break and sure enough they did and they played great there at the end getting us the win.”

(on the final drive of the game and play calling)
“No, that’s coach [Kevin] Gilbride, he called a great game plan. There at the end they had a couple blitz zeros that we checked a couple plays that receives were on. On the same page some guys made some big-time plays: Mario Manningham on the go-rout, Hakeem [Nicks] had some great throws, Victor Cruz all those guys. Our tight ends – a couple of them got hurt and bringing in some new guys and playing in different spots – a great effort by the whole team.”

(on how it feels to win a Super Bowl in the building your brother built)
“It just feels good to win a Super Bowl. It doesn’t matter where or what stadium [you’re in]. Indianapolis has been a great host for the Super Bowl, but I feel this is great for my teammates, my coaches, and the Giants organization for all of the dedication they put in this year to make this happen.”

(on Chevy presentation)
“Thank you.”

SUPER BOWL RECORDS - Ingles

2012-02-06T08:55:00.002-03:00

SUPER BOWL RECORDS SET IN SUPER BOWL XLVI
Oldest Winning Head Coach – 65, Tom Coughlin
Most Consecutive Completions – 16, Tom Brady
Most Consecutive Completions To Start Game – 9, Eli Manning
Most Passing Yards, Career – 1,277, Tom Brady
Most Passes, Career – 197, Tom Brady
Most Completions, Career – 127, Tom Brady
Most Punts Inside 10, Game – 3, Steve Weatherford
Most First Downs Passing, Game, Both Teams – 33 (N.Y.Giants 18, New England 15)

SUPER BOWL RECORDS TIED IN SUPER BOWL XLVI
Most Games Started – 5, Tom Brady; Matt Light
Longest Touchdown Drive, Team – 96 yards, New England
Fewest Turnovers, Game, Team – 0, N.Y.Giants
Most Safeties, Game, Team – 1, N.Y.Giants
Fewest Touchdowns Rushing, Game, Team – 0, New England
Fewest Passes Had Intercepted, Game, Team – 0, N.Y.Giants
Fewest First Downs By Penalty, Game, Team – 0, New England
Fewest Punt Returns, Game, Team – 0, New England
Fewest Fumbles, Game, Team – 0, New England
Fewest Fumbles Lost, Game, Both Teams – 0 (N.Y.Giants 0, New England 0)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON SUPER BOWL XLVI
Compiled By Elias Sports Bureau

Eli Manning is the fifth player to win the Super Bowl MVP Award at least twice. Joe Montana won it three times; Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw and Tom Brady won it twice.

Ahmad Bradshaw is the fourth player to score the game-winning touchdown in the last minute of a Super Bowl, joining John Taylor (Super Bowl XXIII), Plaxico Burress (Super Bowl XLII) and Santonio Holmes (Super Bowl XLIII).

The Giants won the Super Bowl for the fourth time, tying Green Bay for the fourth-highest total of Super Bowl wins. Pittsburgh has won six; San Francisco and Dallas have won five. The Giants have now won the NFL Championship eight times; only Green Bay (13) and Chicago (9) have won as many.

In each of the Giants’ four Super Bowl victories, they had trailed at halftime (10-9 to Denver in Super Bowl XXI, 12-10 to Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV, 7-3 to New England in Super Bowl XLII, and 10-9 to New England in Super Bowl XLVI).

Compiled By Elias Sports Bureau.

NEW YORK GIANTS QB ELI MANNING WINS PETE ROZELLE TROPHY AS SUPER BOWL XLVI MOST VALUABLE PLAYER - Ingles

2012-02-06T01:07:00.000-03:00

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was voted the winner of the Pete Rozelle Trophy, awarded to the Super Bowl XLVI Most Valuable Player.

The award is chosen by a panel comprised of 16 members of the Pro Football Writers Association of America, selected members of the electronic broadcast media and interactively through the National Football League’s official website, NFL.com. Manning collected 18.5 votes of the possible 20 cast in the MVP voting process.

Manning hit nine different receiving targets and completed 30 of 40 passes for 296 yards and one touchdown for a passer rating of 103.8. Manning rallied the Giants from a 17-9 third-quarter deficit while leading scoring drives on three of the team’s four second-half possessions.

Manning, in his eighth season, orchestrated an 88-yard touchdown drive that began at the Giants’ 12 yard-line with 3:53 left in the game. On the first play of the drive, he connected with wide receiver Mario Manningham on a 38-yard completion along the Patriots’ sideline. The pass completion was the longest by either quarterback in Super Bowl XLVI. Manning completed five of six passes for 74 yards on the drive, which ended when running back Ahmad Bradshaw scored on a six-yard touchdown run with :57 remaining that put the Giants ahead 21-17 (two-point conversion failed).

Manning began Super Bowl XLVI by completing his first nine passes for 76 yards and a two-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Victor Cruz that gave the Giants a 9-0 lead. The nine straight completions set a Super Bowl record for consecutive completions to begin a Super Bowl. In the first half of play, Manning completed 13 of 17 passes for 120 yards and a touchdown.

Manning is the first New York Giants player to win the Rozelle Trophy multiple times, having also been voted the MVP of Super Bowl XLII. Previous Giants Super Bowl MVPs include quarterback Phil Simms (Super Bowl XXI), running back Ottis Anderson (Super Bowl XXV) and Manning (Super Bowl XLII). He is the fifth player in NFL history to win multiple Super Bowl MVP honors (Joe Montana, three; Tom Brady, Terry Bradshaw and Bart Starr, two).

Super Bowl XLVI Flip Card

2012-02-05T19:19:00.001-03:00

Super Bowl XLVI - Feds seize more Super Bowl items - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:53:00.001-03:00

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will continue their crackdown on counterfeit NFL Super Bowl merchandise being sold in New England and across the country through early next week.

Operation Fake Sweep, which started Oct. 1, already has netted more than 42,692 phony Super Bowl-related items valued at $4.8 million and resulted in the seizure of 307 websites.

The investigation is targeting stores, flea markets, street vendors and illegal imports coming into the country, including through mail facilities. The confiscated counterfeit, trademarked merchandise has included fake jerseys, ball caps, T-shirts, jackets and other souvenirs.

“We inspect to see increased seizures nationwide over the weekend as we get closer to Super Bowl Sunday, especially in Indianapolis, New York and ... New England,” ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein said.

To date, 223 items worth $40,500 have been confiscated in New England, but ICE refused to say where.

“We’re still continuing to investigate the locations where we made those seizures,” Feinstein said.

Of the websites seized, 291 were selling counterfeit products and 16 were streaming live, copyrighted sporting events over the Internet, including NFL games. Seized sites included nine trying to capitalize on the New England Patriots [team stats] name, including officialpatriotsstore.com and patriotsteamproshop.com.

ICE advises shoppers to purchase NFL merchandise only from known, reputable companies. They should be suspicious if they see terms such “replica,” “knockoff” and “cheap” in a website’s name or advertising; prices too good to be true; and inaccurate grammar, misspellings and punctuation, the agency said. Consumers also should be wary if a website’s “frequently asked questions” section explains the policies for Customs’ seizures or does not provide contact information.

(source Boston Herald)

Super Bowl XLVI - How Suite it is - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:51:00.002-03:00

All 137 luxury suites at Lucas Oil Stadium were sold out months before the opening kick-off for Super Bowl XLVI, according to stadium officials in Indianapolis.

With a minimum reported price of $80,000 per box, that kind of money has turned luxury-suite revenue into one of the most dominant forces in sports, analysts say.

"Luxury suites have been growing in importance since the 1990s and are an essential part of any new stadium being built," says Emily Sparvero, assistant professor at the Sports Industry Research Center at Temple University.

"In fact, most new stadiums are built not because they are physically obsolete, but they are financially obsolete," adds Sparvero.

In the past 20 years, 75% of American sports teams have either built or remodeled their venues, with luxury suite additions being a major reason for the construction and renovation.

Ticket sales, once the main source of any professional team's financial success, are now just part of the revenue mix, along with television contracts and heavily marketed merchandising.

Whether it's the NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball, suites now account for anywhere between 5% and 20% of total team revenue, according to the latest statistics. What started out as a status symbol has evolved into a necessity.

"With greater payroll expenses from player free agency, owners have to find ways to raise more revenue," says Mark Conrad, an associate professor at Fordham University's school of business. "Luxury boxes provide a constant flow, no matter how good or bad the team is playing. The payment is already made and it's part of the revenue generated by the facility."

The money can be huge. While the number of suites varies — the new Yankee Stadium has 68 while Dallas Cowboys Stadium has 300 — any given suite can sell from $224,000 to more than $900,000 per year.

Demand is high, even if the suite — or stadium — has yet to be built. The NFL's San Francisco 49ers want to build a new facility, and even though the project is still being planned, the team says it's already sold $138 million in luxury suites.

As for who's buying the suites, it's a matter of money, as well.

"Corporations and high net-worth individuals are purchasing suites," says Chad Estis, president of Legends, the premium ticket sales company that handles teams such as the Cowboys and Yankees.

"The most common reasons to purchase a suite are to entertain and build relationships with clients and prospects or for families to spend time together," adds Estis. "And if you deliver the right experience, suite holders can be some of the most loyal supporters of a team."

What suite holders get for their generosity is definite luxury. The benefits most often include:

• Luxury, theater-style seats
• Multiple flat TVs
• Private entrance to the stadium on game day
• High-end food and premium liquors
• Access to team events and players

Luxury suite buyers get sweet tax benefits as well. Corporations that buy them can deduct anywhere up to 50% of their cost, as well as that of refreshments for business purposes.

Not everyone, however, sees a perfect game plan with luxury suites. Larry DeGaris, an associate professor of sports marketing at the University of Indianapolis, says there are pitfalls.

"The danger in chasing corporate dollars is that they tend to evaporate during down financial times," DeGaris argues. "Though luxury suites seem to have weathered the recent economic storms well, probably because corporate profits have been healthy."

But not all luxury suite buyers make it through the bad times.

Phil Matalucci runs Luxury Suite Alternative, an online firm that matches event buyers with suite owners. He once sold luxury suites for the Philadelphia Eagles and the NBA's 76ers, but found some buyers wound up over their heads.

"One guy came to me and said he wanted to get out of his suite contract, so I started reselling his seats," says Matalucci, who registered $2 million in sales last year.

"The economy turned upside down and some businesses were asking, 'What do I have this box for?' " Matalucci says. "Other firms say, 'Why do we need to go to all the games?' They need help in selling the tickets, and that's where I come in."

Tickets for the traditional fan are also caught up in the luxury box rage, says Kara Boatman, an economics professor at Saint Mary's College of California.

"With more luxury suites, that meant fewer regular seats, and team owners raised prices to cover some of the cost of building the suites," she says.

Boatman argues that the luxury-suite phenomenon was pushed by the NFL's revenue-sharing model, which until July 2011 allowed owners to keep all funds from luxury suite sales and drove up the average ticket price.

Because the revenue from luxury suites in the NFL must now be shared with players, as it is in Major League Baseball, that could change how suites are viewed in the future, adds Boatman.

"NFL owners still have some enticement to build suites, but the lower revenue will reduce the incentive relative to what it is now," she says.

As for the average fan who occupies the less expensive seats, don't worry about them, says Bill Ordine, a former sports reporter in Philadelphia and Baltimore who now runs a sports fantasy and promotion website.

"Fan loyalty is always based on team performance rather than a sense of being disadvantaged because of luxury suites," Ordine says. "Besides, most fans aspire to be rich enough to afford a suite."

There's no question about the ongoing loyalty for luxury boxes from team owners. While the building boom of new or renovated stadiums may be over, says Fordham's Conrad, luxury suites and their revenue are literally set in cement for now.

"Luxury suites are here to stay for the next few decades. Most franchises have them. You can't really tear them down," says Conrad. "As long as there is demand, they will be a good source of revenue."

(source CNBC)

Super Bowl XLVI - Media guide - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:48:00.003-03:00

When kickoff comes to Lucas Oil Stadium this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, Fred Gaudelli and Drew Esocoff will be together as always, sitting 23 inches apart inside an NBC production truck below the stadium. The duo -- Gaudelli is the producer for the Super Bowl and Esocoff will direct the game -- has been focused on Super Bowl XLVI for months.

In August, Gaudelli convened his 15-person production crew in New York City for a week-long Super Bowl information session at NBC's Rockefeller Center studios. Inside a conference room with large-screen televisions, the group viewed the three previous Super Bowl broadcasts from start to finish, dissecting how to handle specific game scenarios and what elements worked best for both casual and hard-core football fans. "The week was productive in that we were able to see big event television in a low stress environment, and it left us plenty of time to digest it," says Esocoff, who will direct his fourth Super Bowl. "Every aspect [of the broadcast] could be evaluated and thought about, with the hopes of making it better."

How will NBC cover the Super Bowl on Sunday? Here's the breakdown:
Pregame Show

The Super Bowl pregame show is always a delicate dance between entertaining the casual football fan who watches a game once or twice a year and not insulting the NFL die-hard. Sometimes the mix becomes toxic. Last year the New York Times described Fox's celebrity-saturated effort thusly: "There have been so many overlong, silly, banal, poorly conceived Super Bowl pregame shows that only one title can describe the drivel perpetrated by Fox on Sunday: Worst Damn Four-and-a-Half-Hour Super Bowl Show Ever."

Asked how NBC's pregame show will find the line between football and entertainment spectacle, pregame host Bob Costas said, "The first Super Bowl pregame show I did was Bears-Patriots in January 1986 and that was a two-hour pregame show and we thought it was very long. Now this has expanded to six hours, and, by definition, there is some excess no matter how you do it. There has to be a little tongue in cheek, and there has to be a little winking at the audience that some of this stuff is not everybody's cup of tea. The entire six hours will not all be, from my perspective, a 10 out of 10 in terms of what I will be interested in. But some of it may be to someone else. You try to do as professional a job as you can."

Costas will open the six hours of pregame coverage at noon with a live report from Georgia Street in downtown Indianapolis. The show will eventually make its way to more football-centric content, especially after 4 p.m. Costas will interview Patriots quarterback Tom Brady during the pregame, one of many sit-down interviews NBC has scheduled. That list includes studio host Dan Patrick interviewing Giants quarterback Eli Manning, studio analyst Tony Dungy sitting down with Giants coach Tom Coughlin and Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, and game announcer Al Michaels interviewing Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood, the executive in charge of the pregame, said the pregame show will attempt to capitalize on studio analyst Rodney Harrison's relationship with the Patriots. Segments are planned featuring Harrison, a former All-Pro safety for New England, interviewing Patriots coach Bill Belichick, and defensive lineman Vince Wilfork and his wife, Bianca. Harrison will also be featured in a segment with Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, as the two line up against one another in a simulated pass play.

Other pregame features include NBC visiting the hometowns of five of Sunday's featured players -- Manning and defensive lineman Jason Pierre-Paul of the Giants, and Brady, Hernandez and Wes Welker of the Patriots -- and interviews with former coaches, teachers and neighborhood friends who influenced the lives of those players. (Flood said the latter piece will include the person who caught Brady's first pass as a high school football player, which sounds like a sweet touch).

NBC will also re-examine David Tyree's famous catch against the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, and (no surprise) Tyree will appear on the pregame set to talk with Harrison (one of the defenders on the play). There are also additional features planned on the city of Indianapolis, Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, who grew up in Indianapolis and whose grandfather, Benedicto Kiwanuka, was the first prime minister of Uganda, and former Saints special teams standout Steve Gleason, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2011.

Earlier this week, NBC announced that Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward will serve as guest analysts during the pregame.

The show's non-football features include TODAY anchor Matt Lauer interviewing President Barack Obama from The White House, and a Costas interview with Madonna, who will perform at halftime. In what has terrific train wreck possibilities, singer Nick Cannon hosts NBC's pregame red carpet coverage featuring actors and actresses engaging in banter and self-promotion. Bravo's Top Chef, an NBC property, will also be highlighted with Dungy and Harrison judging a tailgating food contest. "I think we have a good mix," promised Flood. "And we'll get more and more football as we get later in the show."
The Game Telecast

What should viewers expect for the game telecast? Gaudelli, who will produce his fourth Super Bowl, says NBC's most important responsibility is that the broadcast reflect the magnitude of the event. "We must have every play that could be termed as controversial nailed down with irrefutable evidence," Gaudelli said. "And I'd also say that Al and Cris (analyst Cris Collinsworth), as they are most Sunday nights, are ahead of the curve in terms of keeping the audience informed. Hopefully, the game looks like a Sunday Night Football game except when you need those little accents to take a show to a different level."

Esocoff said he wants defining looks of every critical play. He reminds himself to anticipate the spectacular, and wants his camera people in place if something happens, especially on the sidelines. "It would be very easy for a group of camera guys to get caught up in a moment and not be cognizant of whether a player had possession, and had his feet in bounds," Esocoff said. "And keep in mind the sideline and end zones are more crowded at a Super Bowl. You have to be really careful because the environment is unforgiving."

Gaudelli said the event being streamed live to online viewers and mobile phones will have no impact on the television broadcast. The social media elements that Sunday Night Football employs weekly remain, including sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya tweeting during the game, and information analyst Mike Florio chatting with viewers on the company's website. Gaudelli said he will have staffers monitoring the Twitter accounts of the more popular players in the NFL, but someone would have to tweet out "something extremely relevant" to make it to air.

Unlike previous broadcasts on other networks, NBC will not do a taped package to introduce the players. Instead, the lineup introductions (the ones where players tell you the college they played at) will be aired as the players leave the locker room for the tunnel.

"During the summer, we decided why don't we roll our lineup introductions while the team is leaving the locker room and walking to the face of the tunnel," Gaudelli said. "So we'll have the offense and defense intros -- which will take up the left half of the screen -- and on the right half of the screen you will see the team leaving the locker room and making its way down the corridor and into the tunnel. The other reason we're doing this is fewer teams are huddling -- though the Patriots are one of them -- and now we can start the game and not have to pause between plays."

NBC had singer Faith Hill shoot a new opener for the game and there will also be a change in the display graphics. As far as crowd shots, the league will tell NBC where invited celebrities are sitting, so Gaudelli and Esocoff will have the option to highlight the boldfaced names in the crowd. Asked how much will Tim Tebow be part of the Super Bowl, Gaudelli laughed. "I have not figured out a way to work him in," he said.

It's likely the game will be the most-watched broadcast in the history of the U.S. Last year's Super Bowl on Fox drew a record 111 million average viewers, and this year's game features a team from the nation's biggest media market (the Giants), the game's most famous quarterback (Tom Brady) and a rematch of a terrific Super Bowl just four years ago. The game's going to do a massive number if it's close heading into the fourth quarter. "We have the opportunity to exceed," said NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus, "what has been done the last two years for this game."

(We asked some key NBC staffers for their thoughts on some additional Super Bowl television topics.)

SI.com: What is your philosophy on crowd shots?

Gaudelli: I think they have a place. They can't be overdone. They can't be gratuitous. I think some will be done in replay. So, say Eli had a long touchdown pass and Peyton Manning reacted demonstratively, you would try to put that in the replay sequence. I know at some point we will talk about Bob Kraft and what an emotional year it has been for him, so he will get some camera time and he is a pretty good reactor as well. But none will take precedence over what is happening on the field.

SI.com: Is Lucas Oil Stadium a good place to broadcast a Super Bowl?

Esocoff: Absolutely. The sight lines are great and they gave a lot of thought to the television aspect. When we first got there, some people thought the game camera positions were a little higher than we'd like, but in live sports it is always better to cheat a little higher to give yourself a little more room for error. The higher you are, the less chance you get of being blocked on the near sideline during a critical play.

SI.com: How do you broadcast for both a casual audience and hard-core football audience?

Collinsworth: I always equate it to a party. If you have a dinner party for six people that you know really well, the conversation will take on a certain tone. If you have 100 people you don't know all that well, that conversation will take on a different tone. We will try to be as inclusive as we can. And let's face it, there will probably be 80 million prospective clients of ours that we would like to invite to our Sunday party come next year.

Michaels: It's a little bit of a dance. You don't want to insult the intelligence of those who watch football all the time. On the other hand, you want to enhance the enjoyment of those who may not know what had just taken place.

SI.com: Is there pressure to do something new on a Super Bowl broadcast?

Gaudelli: There is no pressure. Why? I think we have the correct formula for how to do this and it's not a lot different than the Sunday Night formula. We feel like the telecast we do every Sunday night cuts through other telecasts. I don't think viewers are expecting to see anything new, crazy and different. I think they expect to sit down and watch and listen to an enjoyable broadcast that answers all their questions and keeps them informed. If you try to come out and do something that's never been done before after you've done 19 games this year, I think you could be setting yourself up for some failure.

(source Richard Deitsch SI.com)

Super Bowl XLVI - AdAge Ad Chart - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:38:00.002-03:00

With packages including 30-second spots in the Super Bowl XLVI going for as much as $3.5 million -- although not everyone is paying that price -- and the marketer-approved match-up between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots set, all eyes are focused on NBC's coming broadcast of the event, scheduled to take place in Indianapolis on Feb. 5.

Volkswagen has already released the commercial it hopes will prove a worthy successor to last year's spot starring a pint-sized Darth Vader. Hulu is returning to the Super Bowl in a push for its Hulu Plus paid service. Advertising Age is monitoring all the comings and goings, ad debuts, offbeat strategies and new ad techniques around Super Bowl XLVI.

Here's our rundown of known 2012 Super Bowl sponsors. Check back often as we update the list heading into the game.
2nd Story Software
Buy: One 30-second ad slated to air in the first quarter of the game.
Creative: As tax time nears, company will promote its TaxACT tax-preparation software that allows them to prepare their federal taxes for free
Agency: J.W. Morton and Associates, with production duties handled by Mechaniks

American Honda Motor
Buy: One 60-second spot at the end of the third quarter
Creative: There's no Ferrari 250GT California Spyder in "Matthew's Day Off," the Super Bowl spot planned by American Honda for its new CR-V, but a grown-up Matthew Broderick reprises his role in the 1986 comedy classic as a convincing truant who's faking a cold to take the day off from working at the studio.
Agency: Independent RPA

American Honda's Acura
Buy: One 60-second spot to air in the third quarter
Creative: The commercial will show comedian Jerry Seinfeld going to absurd lengths to bribe the man who holds the rights to buy the first 2015 Acura NSX supercar. Jay Leno also makes an appearance, as does the legendary "Soup Nazi" from the comedian's famous sitcom.
Agency: Independent RPA

Anheuser-Busch InBev
Buy: A-B InBev's Super Bowl ads will total four and a half minutes of ad time across six commercials. A-B InBev is perhaps the Super Bowl's largest ongoing sponsor and typically buys up to between three and four minutes' worth of ad inventory.
Creative: Two 30-second ads in the first quarter will tout Bud Light Platinum; one 30-second spot just before halftime and one 60-second spot in the fourth quarter for Bud Light; and two 60-second spots (one in the second quarter and one in the third quarter) for flagship Budweiser. (Bud also makes a cameo in one of General Electric's commercials.)
Agency: Translation, led by Steve Stoute and Jay-Z among other, is doing the Bud Light Platinum ads. Bud Light is handled by McGarry Bowen(the 60-second ad) and Cannonball (The 30-second ad). The Budweiser ads come from Anomaly.

Audi of America
Buy: One 60-second spot
Creative: Audi's commercial, its fifth consecutive entry in the Super Bowl, suggests its cars' bright headlights could kill vampires.
Agency: Independent Venables , Bell & Partners

Best Buy
Buy: One 30-second spot in the first quarter
Creative: The tributes to Steve Jobs that followed the Apple CEO's death led the retailer to conclude that today's stars live in Silicon Valley, not Hollywood. So Best Buy is trading in last year's celebrities -- Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne -- for inventors such as Philippe Kahn, an early camera phone developer, and Kevin Systrom, who developed the social photo platform Instagram.
Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky is handling creative.

Bridgestone Americas
Buy: Two 30-second spots, one slated to air in the first spot in the break at the end of the first half and the second slated to run in the final pod of the third quarter.
Creative: Look for sports celebrities including Troy Aikman to lend a hand in ads that explore fictional scenarios in which Bridgestone Ecopia tires help change the world of sports.
Agency: Independent Richards Group is handling creative.

CareerBuilder
Buy: One 30-second spot
Creative: Not yet determined. All eyes will be on CareerBuilder to see if its next Super Bowl ad makes use of chimpanzees, a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent years.
Agency: Work is being done in-house.

Cars.com
Buy: One 30-second spot in the third quarter
Creative: A car shopper's confidence, enabled by Cars.com research, emerges in the form of a second head that sings. Viewers who use Shazam (the smartphone app that can identify songs' titles and artists) to tag the commercial will earn $1 for one of seven children's charities.
Agency: Omnicom Group's DDB Chicago

Century 21
Buy: One 30-second spot in the third quarter
Creative: The realtor is making its debut in the Super Bowl. Donald Trump, Deion Sanders and Apolo Ohno will appear in the spot. Century 21 will also sponsor half an hour of NBC's pre-game festivities.
Agency: Independent shop Red Tettemer & Partners of Philadelphia

Chrysler
Buy: One two-minute spot
Creative: The ad is expected to feature Clint Eastwood. Last year Chrysler made a huge splash with a two-minute ad touting vehicles that were "Imported from Detroit" over an Eminem song.
Agency: To be determined

Coca-Cola
Buy: Three spots, all starring animated polar bears. One 30-second spot will air in the first quarter, one 60-second ad will air in the second quarter and one 30-second ad will air in the third quarter.
Creative: In what appears to be a first, Coca-Cola has prepared two versions of a minute-long commercial to run during the second quarter and won't choose which runs until it sees how the game is unfolding. The ad, "Catch," shows two polar bears watching the Super Bowl, each wearing a scarf in his team's colors: red and white for the Giants and blue and white for the Patriots. The bear whose team is losing will step outside the cave, see a group of other bears lounging and drinking Coke, and catch -- with difficulty -- a bottle of Coke they throw him. The ad with two versions is part of an integrated campaign featuring the two bears watching the game live and sharing their reactions to plays, the halftime show and commercials at www.cokepolarbowl.com.
Agency: Independent Wieden & Kennedy

Dannon Yogurt
Buy: One 30-second spot, set to air in the third quarter
Creative: Actor John Stamos will tout Dannon Oikos Greek yogurt, a reaction, perhaps, to the growing popularity of the Greek yogurt category.
Agency: Poptent, with help from WPP's Young & Rubicam , which is agency of record.

E-Trade
Buy: One 30-second spot, placement of which is still being worked out
Creative: The E-Trade baby is back for a fifth consecutive Super Bowl appearance, with a new focus on more mature matters such as changes in family. The commercial, which E-Trade says is first in a series of new ads planned for 2012, shows the campaign's baby "interacting with people facing special life events that trigger a need to consider financial planning."
Agency: WPP's Grey

General Electric
Buy: One spot in the first slot of the fifth break of the first half, according to GE, and one spot in the third break of the second half
Creative: The company hopes to draw an emotional response with commercials showing how its employees' work helps people and even the country as a whole. One spot will focus on GE's work with energy -- even touting its role in powering Budweiser breweries -- while the other will feature the company's appliances.
Agency: BBDO

General Motors
Buy: Five spots
Creative: The company will air three ads for Chevrolet and one ad for Cadillac in the game. One Chevy ad is the winner of Chevy's Route 66 consumer-generated ad contest: "Chevy Happy Grad," in which a graduate celebrates his mistaken belief that his parents have given him a Camaro. Another spot opens on a post-apocalyptic world only to reveal that Chevy Silverado drivers are surviving just fine -- too bad one of their friends drove a Ford. A third ad spotlights the Sonic. Chevy is also offering a Super Bowl app for smartphones and tablets in a bid to wring extra value from its buy through digital and social media.
Agency: Omnicom Group's Goodby , Silverstein and Partners is lead U.S. agency for Chevrolet. "Happy Grad" was produced by an independent director. Publicis Groupe's Fallon crafted the Cadillac ad.

GoDaddy.com
Buy: Two 30-second spots, one in each half of the game
Creative: One 30-second spot will feature veteran "GoDaddy Girl" and race-car driver Danica Patrick and a reformed version of the Pussycat Dolls, and will focus on the company's 'cloud'-based services. The other ad will feature Ms. Patrick as well as fitness guru Jillian Michaels, and will highlight the company's '.CO' domain-name extension.
Agency: Handled in-house

H&M
Buy: One 30-second spot slated to air in the second quarter of the game
Creative: The fashion retailer, entering the Super Bowl ad roster for the first time, will launch its David Beckham Bodywear collection, prompting thoughts that its ad might feature the celebrity soccer player moving around in his skivvies.
Agency: Handled in-house

History Channel
Buy: One 30-second spot in the fourth quarter
Creative: The ad will depict "another day at the office" for the people of the swamp depicted in the cable outlet's series "Swamp People."
Agency: Handled in-house

Hulu
Buy: One 30-second spot in an undetermined position
Creative: Will Arnett will hold forth for the video-sharing site in what is expected to be a rehash of the commercials the company ran in 2009 featuring Alec Baldwin and Seth McFarlane, only this time promoting Hulu Plus, the company's paid service
Agency: MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Hyundai
Buy: Two 30-second spots, one in first quarter and one in fourth quarter
Creative: One spot shows the danger of working as a animal-handler in a dramatic race between Hyundai and cheetah (the car gets away; the animal-handler doesn't), while the other demonstrates the car's pulse-quickening effect on a man with no pulse. The automaker is trying to be less serious than in earlier, establishing Super Bowl spots and to focus more on sparking an emotional connection with consumers.
Agency: Innocean, Hyundai's internal agency

Kia Motor
Buy: One 60-second spot in the fourth quarter
Creative: An "extreme dream sequence" ensues after the Sandman accidentally spills a whole bag of magic dust on a sleeping husband. The dreamscape -- promoting the Kia Optima Limited -- includes celebrities and quasi-celebrities including Motley Crue, model Adriana Lima, MMA fighter Chuck Liddell and champion bull rider Judd Lefew. Kia is premiering the commercial starting Feb. 2 on YouTube and in movie theaters using National CineMedia's FirstLook pre-movie program. Short teaser clips will appear on TV and in movie theaters.
Agency: Independent David + Goliath, in its third consecutive Super Bowl appearance for Kia

Mars Inc's M&M's
Buy: One 30-second spot in the first quarter
Creative: M&M's returns to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1998, marking its second appearance in the event. In the interim, Mars has put most of its emphasis in the game on its Snickers candy bar. M&M's will be introducing a new character in its line of animated spokescandies: Ms. Brown.
Agency: Omnicom Group's BBDO

Met Life
Buy: One 30-second ad in the fourth quarter of the game
Creative: Charles Schulz' "Peanuts" characters join forces with dozens of other popular cartoon characters.
Agency: MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky

National Football League
Buy: One 60-second spot to air at the end of the third quarter
Creative: Ad to focus on player safety and list the various measures, rules and equipment put in place over the years to keep players safe from harm. Peter Berg, director of football-themed "Friday Night Lights" is the director.
Agency: WPP's Grey

Paramount Pictures
Buy: Two ads
Creative: Trailers for "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" and Sacha Baron Cohen's "The Dictator"
Agency: In-house

PepsiCo 's Doritos
Buy: At least two 30-second spots
Creative: Pepsi 's Frito-Lay unit is running its usual "Crash the Super Bowl" contest that asks amateur ad-makers to crate their own 30-second ad, with the winner's creation being shown during the Super Bowl. Popular comedy team The Lonely Island will also create a 30-second spot.
Agency: Omnicom Group's Goodby Silverstein and Partners is assisting.

PepsiCo Beverages
Buy: Pepsi will run two commercials, a 60-second spot for Pepsi and a 45-second spot for Pepsi Max
Creative: The Pepsi commercial features Elton John as a king and "X Factor" winner Melanie Amaro as a visitor to his court, which has a certain "Hunger Games" vibe. There's also a special cameo at the end. The other commercial shows a Coke Zero truck driver getting caught buying Pepsi Max, echoing a 1996 Super Bowl ad called "Security Camera," in which a camera catches a Coke deliveryman trying to get a can of Pepsi.
Agency: Omnicom Group's TBWA /Chiat/Day

Relativity Media
Buy: One spot to air in fourth quarter of the game
Creative: Trailer for "Act of Valor," an action movie that features real Navy SEALs
Agency: In-house

Samsung Electronics
Buy: One 90-second ad set to air in the fourth quarter
Creative: Samsung is running an ad for its new Galaxy Note and is widely expected to mock Apple fans to promote the smartphone. This is Samsung's first time on the Super Bowl ad roster.
Agency: MDC Partners' 72ndandSunny

Skechers
Buy: One spot to run just before the two-minute warning in the first half of the game.
Creative: Entrepreneur Mark Cuban will star along with a bulldog named "Mr. Quigley" in a commercial promoting the Skechers' GoRun shoe line.
Agency: To be determined

Teleflora
Buy: One 30-second spot
Creative: The Teleflora Super Bowl commercial ogles model Adriana Lima as she dresses for a Valentine's Day date and admires a bouquet she's received. "Guys, Valentine's Day is not that complicated," she says suggestively. "Give -- and you shall receive." Tagline: "Happy Valentine's Night."
Agency: Fire Station Agency, Teleflora's in-house agency

Toyota
Buy: Two 30-second spots
Creative: One spot, saying Toyota has kept reinventing the Camry, imagines the reinvention of everything from a police officer to a couch to a blender to a baby.
Agency: The reinvention ad was created by Toyota 's agency of record, Saatchi & Saatchi , Los Angeles.

Toyota's Lexus
Buy: One 30-second spot, set to air at the end of the first quarter. This is the first appearance of Lexus on the Super Bowl ad roster.
Creative: The spot -- called "The Beast" -- touts the Lexus 2013 GS with a rather "Jurassic Park" feel, showing the car igniting inside a containment chamber before it breaks out and skids to center stage. The voice over, "This is just the beginning," hints at the models to come.
Agency: The spot was created by Attik, a Lexus roster agency; the overall GS campaign is being orchestrated by the brand's agency of record, Team One .

Universal Pictures
Buy: To be determined
Creative: Trailers likely. One will preview "Battleship." Universal is part of NBC Universal, which is broadcasting the event.
Agency: In-house

Volkswagen
Buy: One 60-second spot to air in the second quarter
Creative: VW made one of the biggest splashes in the 2011 Super Bowl, thanks to an early release of an ad featuring a kid in a Darth Vader uniform and his attempt to use the Force on one of the automaker's vehicles. Now it has released the follow-up early, revealing that it kicks off with a dog fighting to return to form -- so it can run with a new Volkswagen Beetle.
Agency: Interpublic Group's Deutsch LA

Walt Disney Pictures
Buy: To be determined
Creative: Trailers. One film likely to get a spotlight is "John Carter of Mars," an action-filled epic centered in outer space. "The Avengers," about a team of Marvel superheroes, is getting a commercial during the game.
Agency: In-house

Source AD Age

NFL may be hitting stride with female fans - ingles

2012-02-05T08:36:00.001-03:00

The NFL's concerted effort over the past two years to market the game and apparel to women is showing signs of paying off, but sales of league merchandise still trail Major League Baseball and collegiate-licensed materials.

In terms of female fans, the NFL trails only college sports, according to data from The ESPN Sports Poll and the U.S. Census, with league officials saying 44 percent of all football fans are now women.

Various sources show positive indicators for the NFL:

• NFL merchandise sold to women jumped significantly over last year, according to Fanatics, the world's largest online retailer of officially licensed products. The 2011 playoff season showed a dramatic change: an 85 percent sales increase in December over 2010 and a 125 percent increase in January from the year prior.

• Although the 2011 NFL season saw a slight drop in the number of women who watched games on TV, ratings increased from a 3.7 to a 3.9 in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, according to Nielsen.

• The number of American women participating in fantasy football doubled in 2011, according to Ipsos Public Affairs, which works with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Marketing experts say women are a prized demographic for the NFL because of their value to advertisers. Ann Bastianelli, senior lecturer of marketing at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, said 70 percent of "important family decisions" are made by women.

"When we talk about women being the decision-makers, I think a lot of people don't realize that's cars, stocks, electronics -- things people might not associate women making the decisions about," said Meghann Malone, a marketing manager for marketing, advertising and public relations firm IMRE.

A growing female fan base creates a more marketable NFL for advertisers and sponsors.

"A female consumer is a consumer for life," Malone said. "They're the ones more likely to become brand loyalists."

Peter O'Reilly, vice president of fan strategy/marketing for the NFL, said the league has done well in this area the last couple of years.

In 2010, the league introduced a clothing line specifically made for women called "Fit for You," featuring various choices, from junior sizes to maternity clothing. Building upon the positive response to that initiative, the league added to the line in 2011 and opened up a new section of its website just for women: www.nfl.com/women.

The new site highlights the women's apparel line and also added NFL Party, a site that promotes "homegating." NFL Party features a blog with tips and recipes.

"NFL Party was coming together with licensees to make it easy for families and people hosting parties, and certainly women are largely driving that in the home," O'Reilly said. The league considers the site a success, he said, and will increase its content.

O'Reilly also said NFLShop.com saw double-digit growth this season on merchandise geared toward women. Fanatics noted the same, particularly during the 2011 playoffs.

NexTag, the online comparison-shopping site, said women's jerseys accounted for six of the top 10 Tom Brady jerseys viewed and six of the top 10 Eli Manning jersey viewed the week before and after championship weekend. Jersey searches since Jan. 1 have been dominated by women's products, with the top five most-searched jerseys being women's Tim Tebow or Aaron Rodgers jerseys.

When the NFL women's clothing line was expanded in 2011, the league looked to the women who make up the NFL family for some help. Wives of players, coaches and owners donned gear for advertisements, which appeared in popular magazines.

"The NFL has done a really good job realizing wives and daughters of coaches are some of the best ambassadors of the game," said Heather Zeller, founder of AGlamSlam.com, a website dedicated to the intersection of fashion and sports. "They could have used Victoria's Secret models, but these are the women actually watching the game, so they're much more relatable."

One of those women is Suzanne Johnson, wife of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, whom Zeller said has helped push NFL fashion into high fashion. "They're treating sports apparel as high fashion, and that's unique. It's a point of differentiation with other leagues," Zeller said.

Johnson helped create an NFL-themed shopping experience for women before the Jets game against the Patriots this year that looked more like a Miami night club than a sports apparel showroom. Women's Wear Daily reported that Johnson marketed the new duds to magazine editors and even convinced some of her socialite friends to wear Jets jerseys to Badgley Mischka's runway during New York Fashion Week.

Johnson appeared this week on the "Wendy Williams Show" highlighting some of her favorite Jets gear. Even with the recent successes, the NFL has a way to go to catch the retail sales leaders.

MLB led all sports with $5 billion in retail sales in 2010, with Collegiate Licensing Company behind, at $4.3 billion. The NFL lagged at about $3.3 billion.

With double-digit growth in women's merchandise in 2011 and a growing buzz, the NFL could make up some ground in the next study: "I haven't seen the other leagues in fashion magazines," Zeller said. "They've done more than just create something you can wear in the stadium on Sunday."

(source ESPN)

Super Bowl XLVI - Three Football Families, Linked by Philosophies - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:33:00.002-03:00

Before he became one of the N.F.L.’s most powerful and successful owners, Robert K. Kraft was a student at Columbia, and a Giants fan, watching Y. A. Tittle and Andy Robustelli on a DuMont television.
When Kraft moved home to Boston for graduate school, the nascent Patriots were blacked out. So he and his wife, Myra, pregnant with their first child, Jonathan, settled in for a long, happy marriage and more Giants games, watching great teams and unsightly ones. But by the time Kraft, having changed his allegiance and become a Patriots season-ticket holder, was ready to buy the foundering franchise more than three decades later, he studied two teams: the San Francisco 49ers, who dominated the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Giants.

Bob Tisch, a Kraft family friend who bought 50 percent of the Giants in 1991 to join with the Mara family as equal partners, advised Kraft not to take on limited partners if he could avoid it. Kraft listened, but he was also intrigued by the way the Giants had created an intense fan loyalty and a deep base of season-ticket holders.

On Sunday, 50 years after the Giants first entertained a young Kraft, the Giants and the Patriots — their entanglement stretching through generations and championships, shared philosophy and similar results — will be together again, facing off in the Super Bowl. The winner will take home the fourth Lombardi Trophy in its franchise’s history. On the field, the game is a rematch of the 2008 Super Bowl, with the potential for revenge for the Giants’ stunning upset of the undefeated Patriots. But off the field, it is a demonstration of how three families — the Krafts in New England, the Maras and the Tisches in New York — close enough to share celebrations and sorrows, have shown again that the most successful way to run a team is by providing continuity.

“We’re all trying to emulate the Patriots,” said John Mara, the president of the Giants, during a 40-minute conversation Thursday with Steve Tisch, the Giants’ chairman, and Robert and Jonathan Kraft. “They have solid ownership and a solid organization underneath that owner. The franchises that impulsively make changes year after year don’t succeed in the long run. You have to hire the right people and give them a chance to do their jobs and stay with them. And ride the ups and downs. They haven’t had many downs. We’ve had a few.”

“We had one pretty big down,” Kraft interrupted, alluding to the Super Bowl loss.

“18-1 is not so bad,” Mara replied.

“I would have taken 17-3,” Kraft said, sighing, his questionable math not masking that he would have traded a few regular-season defeats for a Super Bowl victory.

The N.F.L. is designed to promote family ownership. Its rules prohibit corporations from purchasing teams and encourage the passage of franchises from one generation to the next. Robert Kraft bought his team in 1994, and Jonathan has been a Patriots executive since. The Maras have owned the Giants since 1925, when Tim Mara paid — according to legend — $500 for a team in the budding N.F.L.

In 1991, Preston Robert Tisch, a hotel magnate and former United States postmaster general, bought 50 percent of the team, forming a rare partnership with his friend Wellington Mara. They died within weeks of each other in 2005, and when Tisch’s son Steve began attending owners’ meetings, Kraft told him: “I love your dad. I love your family. I’m going to be your guy here.”

The relationship between John Mara and Steve Tisch and his brother, Jonathan, like that between their fathers, has been so free of conflict that Mara said he never once had to refer to the operating agreement that was hammered out in 1991.

“That’s great,” Kraft said.

Of Steve Tisch, Mara said: “The only conflict we had was when he came in, he promised me a part in one of his movies. He has not delivered on that yet.”

“But we offered it to Tom Hanks,” replied Tisch, who won an Academy Award as the producer of “Forrest Gump.”

Family ownership has been so successful because as Commissioner Roger Goodell said: “It represents the total commitment of the family in that business — and in many cases, the single purpose: football. I think that has been terrific for the league over the years, and you see that kind of continuity and that kind of partnership in this game. The Kraft family, the Mara family, the Tisch family — they’re competitors on the field and partners off the field.”

Continuity does not necessarily ensure success. A failing philosophy stretched over many years is still a failure. But when Kraft took control of the Patriots, Wellington and John Mara put him in touch with George Young, their general manager at the time. Young had built the teams that won the Giants’ first two Super Bowls, and Kraft spoke to him about personnel, hiring the right people and setting boundaries within the franchise.

Not surprisingly, Kraft and Mara use almost identical language, even in separate interviews, to explain their management philosophy — autonomy, but with boundaries— even as they go about it much differently. Mara, whose family business has long been football, talks several times a day with the Giants’ personnel executives, and he makes them defend their positions. If they disagree, Mara said, he lets them follow their convictions because they have a track record.

Kraft, who runs a mammoth paper and packaging business out of his Gillette Stadium office, has given Coach Bill Belichick more autonomy over the years. But he has also talked to him about having people in the organization who are willing to challenge him, a component, both Mara and Kraft believe, that is important for extremely successful people. Kraft said he tried hard not to second-guess, though. He said he wanted to encourage people who work for him to be bold. And he heeds the advice from Young that still resonates: minimize division from within.

“You feel stable,” the former Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi said of the working environment. “You don’t worry about the owner someplace talking to the barber and having the barber talk him out of a pick. It gives you such a feeling of security to operate.”

Young’s fingerprints remain on both teams: his last hire with the Giants was Jerry Reese, who rose through the scouting ranks and on Sunday could win his second Super Bowl as the team’s general manager. The comfort with risk that the Giants’ stability engenders might be best symbolized by their selection last year of defensive lineman Jason Pierre-Paul, a raw talent who bolstered a strong part of the team.

“If you look at our two franchises, you don’t see a lot of going all-in a given year and doing things that might be a big bet on something that might not be a consistent theme,” said Jonathan Kraft, now the Patriots’ president. “And I think it probably stems from the families at the top, but also the people that are running the team on the football side.”

Tedy Bruschi played linebacker for the Patriots’ first three Super Bowl championship teams and is now an ESPN analyst. Robert Kraft used to tell players that they were all welcome at his table, a comforting antidote, Bruschi said, to Belichick’s “do your job” mantra. But what struck Bruschi most from observing Kraft and the league was the ability to withstand criticism.

“The most important thing in any organization is the mental toughness of the owner,” Bruschi said. “People talk about the players’ mental toughness, but the owner has to have it more than anybody else.”

That is not always easy. Kraft said recently that a top broadcasting executive had encouraged him not to hire Belichick. Mara said that he, like everyone else who loves the Giants, was upset when they lost Steve Smith, Kevin Boss and Plaxico Burress to free agency. But all three received much more than the Giants had determined they should be paid. Now, Mara wonders if Victor Cruz would have gotten on the field if any of them had stayed. And Tisch concedes that he and Mara were frustrated during the Giants’ four-game losing streak this season. But they did not question decisions, Tisch said, and they never considered firing Coach Tom Coughlin.

“The biggest mistake people in our business make is when they are influenced by what will be in the next day’s headlines,” Mara said. “You can’t make football decisions based on the next day’s headlines. You’ve got to have patience to ride it out and do things that are best for the long term. I’m not sure that everybody shares that philosophy.”

Kraft added, “We want our competitors to drive their business on the headlines of the day.”

“Well, some of them do,” Tisch said.

Fifty years after he watched the Giants while in college, Robert Kraft marvels that he gets to play a Super Bowl against friends. When the Giants and the Patriots began their postseason runs last month, Tisch and Jonathan Kraft spoke after each game. Some of them will be crestfallen after Sunday’s game. But at least the three families will still have something significant in common: they will probably be near the top again next season.

“When we both realized that the four of us are going to be in the Super Bowl together,” Tisch said, “the conversation I had with Jonathan and Bob, you feel like you’re talking to very, very close friends who know you very well. For a period of time on Sunday, that friendship is not going to disappear. It’s just. ...”

Robert Kraft jumped in: “It’s not going to be quite as warm.”

(source New York Times)

Super Bowl XLVI - The Lucas Oll name game - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:31:00.001-03:00

Regardless of who wins Super Bowl XLVI, Forrest Lucas will walk away a winner. That's because for Lucas, an Indiana native, the Super Bowl festivities on Sunday (Feb. 5) will take place in Lucas Oil Stadium, named after the company he started with his second wife, Charlotte, just over 20 years ago.

And though the decision to buy the naming rights to the stadium initially looked like a Hail Mary when the deal was announced in 2006, it turns out it was a good bet for this company of just 400 employees.

"My first reaction to being asked about the naming rights was that it would be way too much and we couldn't afford to do it," said Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures and produces automotive lubricants, additives and oil. "But, as I was driving home, I started thinking about it and I didn't even know how much it cost to sponsor a stadium at that point, but I began to think that this could be the thing I was looking for to make a splash."

That splash ended up costing Lucas $122 million for a 20-year contract for the naming rights to the stadium, now Lucas Oil Stadium, which is the home of the Indianapolis Colts. But with an estimated $30-to-$40 million of media exposure expected during the Super Bowl, and hundreds of million viewers focused on the stadium during the game, Lucas, the constant salesman, is hoping the decision proves a valuable asset to his company.

It was a big gamble when you consider that the Super Bowl was not yet scheduled to be played in Indianapolis when Lucas made the deal in 2006. To help bring the Super Bowl to the Hoosier State, Lucas contributed $1 million of the $25 million which was needed for the bid to bring the game to his home state. In 2008, his contributions, along with those of 120 plus other donors, helped secure the bid for Indianapolis to host the 2012 Super Bowl, as NFL owners chose the bid for Lucas Oil Stadium over bids from Reliant Stadium in Houston and the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.

Lucas, however, decided it was worth taking a chance.

"When we first did it, I knew it would make us look like a Fortune-500 company, which we are not, but that is part of selling. I think, when it is all said and done, it will have a huge impact. At least I am betting it will," Lucas said, chuckling. "It certainly is giving a lot of attention and puts you out there."

Getting started
Lucas Oil Products, super bowl

While the Super Bowl may represent the latest chapter in the story of Forrest Lucas, his journey began just two counties over from the site of Super Bowl XLVI, when he began to slowly work his way up the ranks of the trucking industry in the 1960s. A few years later, Lucas began working as an owner-operator of his own fleet of 14 moving trucks. The experience proved to be a valuable one for Lucas in more than one way.

"It was a small business, so I was my own boss," said Lucas. "I learned how to save a nickel here and a penny there. I learned the things that it takes to be a good negotiator and a sensible person and also how to take care of your money. It forced me to be responsible and that was particularly important because it taught me to see something through, even if that meant working through the night into the next day. You have to have those kinds of ethics and people have to trust you."

Other than teaching Lucas valuable business lessons, owning his own fleet of trucks also allowed Lucas to lay the foundation for Lucas Oil Products. At the time, though, making his own oil was nothing more than his response to a problem his trucking fleet faced.

"I needed some better oil, that is all there was to it," said Lucas. "I had never learned how to make oil products, but I had worked as a mechanic on my own trucks, so I knew how transmissions and motors worked and I knew how oil interacted with them. Then I got curious about how to make it better."

Lucas attempted to make better oils that would help prevent his trucks from breaking down while also maximizing their performance for his fleet. To accomplish this, Lucas began searching in chemical junkyards for the right ingredients to mix and match to create his products. Those searches, combined with his existing mechanical knowledge, led to the first official Lucas Oil Products, and a test of these products on his own trucks proved the formula worked.

"I never went to college, but there are times when you are taught something and you are told this is the way it is and you believe it enough that you close your mind to any other thoughts," said Lucas. "Eventually I learned the way you were supposed to do it, but by then I already knew I was way ahead of everyone else."

When the economic recession of 1987 hit, Lucas had a chance to show others what he already knew. Since the recession hurt the commercial trucking industry in particular, Lucas now had an avenue to try to sell his products to small and independent auto-parts stores and truck stores. Two years later Lucas purchased his first plant in Corona, Calif., and the company has been growing ever since. In 2003 Lucas opened a second plant, in Indiana, bringing a part of the company back to his home state. That growth has continued until today, with Lucas Oil Products currently sold in over 20 countries around the world.

Humility and the right people

Today Lucas Oil Products owns racing teams and racing series, and sponsors racers. The company also owns television station and two racetracks, in California and Missouri. Additionally, the company owns the Lucas Oil Cattle Company and the Lucas Estate in Indiana, which hosts charitable events and corporate retreats. With over 100 products and annual revenues in excess of $150 million, Lucas' story is undoubtedly of success, for which he credits his business beginnings.

"I always tell people, don’t go out there thinking you are going to go out there and finance everything," said Lucas. "Then you are in debt up to your knees to start with. I never went into debt when we got the thing off the ground and running. I can't tell you how extremely important that is."

By avoiding debt, Lucas was able to expand and grow his business as he needed, but it was another quality that helped Lucas become a leader in manufacturing additives, oil and lubricants.

"I never let myself go daydreaming way out there into the future," said Lucas. "I was just trying to prepare for a few years ahead and I still do. I have always tried to be realistic. I would never have believed when I started that we would be where we are when we started. It wasn't until maybe four or five years ago that I thought: Nothing is impossible now. "

While Lucas' planning may have been crucial to the future success of the company, he is quick to give credit to others who have been there with him on the journey.

"A lot of it is being able to work hard, think outside the box, but I also surrounded myself with good people," said Lucas. "That was very important, because you can't know everything and you have to have a lot of people out there to help you. I couldn’t have done it without a good staff of people and I'll tell you we worked our butt off when we started and we still do."

Source Business News Daily

Myra Kraft's legacy lives on in the NFL - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:29:00.001-03:00

It has become popular for the New England Patriots to be considered villains, largely due to the monosyllabic ruthlessness of Bill Belichick. And then, this year, the world learned about Patriots owner Robert Kraft. He helped broker the agreement to end the lockout, even as his wife of 48 years, Myra, was dying. She passed away from cancer on July 20; the lockout ended five days later, with Indianapolis Colts offensive lineman Jeff Saturday hugging Kraft. This week, Kraft has re-told his story, and people have had a chance to express their appreciation of him. Here they are, in their own words:

Kraft: “[The Patriots] saved me. I never understood what the word heartbroken meant; it’s hard for anyone to relate to it. My wife was 19 and I was 20 when she proposed to me. We had five kids right away. Then they left and we became best pals for 25 years. She was 98 pounds, read four books a week and was healthy. I thought she would outlive me for 30 years. This horrible cancer came and it’s wrecked my life. Having this team has been a savior for me.”

Giants owner John Mara: “I’m not necessarily happy to be playing Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, I’ll tell you that. But yeah, I’m very happy for Bob because he put his heart and soul into those negotiations during a very difficult time for him and his family. So I think the success they’ve had is well-deserved.”

Kraft: “She thought I was a little nuts when I bought the team, but I told her that if we did a good job of managing the team, we could have a greater impact on our community than if we gave a half a million dollars to charity. You can see what it’s meant to our community and our fans throughout the country. The fact that she was so dear to me and all of our players are wearing her initials above their heart is an endearing thing. What she represented is important and I hope that special sense of spirit comes through.”

Patriots defensive tackle Vince Wilfork: “You would see her around the stadium, but she spent most of her time in the community just helping folks. That was her biggest thing, you know, making a difference in the world, just helping people that weren’t able to help themselves—were it physical or financial or whatever it may be. She just had a big, big heart for being such a small woman. She is absolutely missed from all of us, and I’m pretty sure from around the world because of what she meant to a lot of people. My wife and I always were true believers in helping people, and it’s just like we’re the same people as Mr. and Mrs. Kraft.”

Mara: “I don’t think we get to the finish line without Bob Kraft. The message that he kept delivering to the players, which I think really resonated, ‘We’re not going to let you do a bad deal. We need to do a deal that works for both of us and we need to make it a long-term deal, because that has such a huge effect on our business which, in turn, helps you.’ That message came across over and over again, and I think it made an impression on them, and I think they all respected the amount of time he was putting in. Everybody knew what he was going through and he still found the time to be there with us. Like I said, I don’t think we get the deal done without him being there.”

Kraft: “It was a tough time in my life because my sweetheart was ill with cancer. I didn’t do anything for four and a half months. She knew how important this game is to America, and she gave me more credit in my ability to help negotiate things. She thought I was better than maybe I really was. That’s the only thing I ever left her side for. When things got a little cuckoo with the lawyers, I wasn’t going to waste my time. I think the players and [NFLPA executive director DeMaurice] Smith understood that. I hope in a small way that helped us to get a resolution. Jeff was very kind to give me that hug right after she passed away.”

Wes Welker: “She has definitely left her mark on a lot of guys in that locker room. The way she gave back, volunteered, and the way she was the first person to hug and kiss you after games whether it was a win or loss — she was a very inspirational woman, and we’ll look for her to be with us on Sunday again.”

Kraft: “She was my best pal.”

This article was written by Bruce Arthur and appeared in the National Post.

Remembering a Twin Cities Super Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:27:00.001-03:00

It has been a quiet week leading up to the Super Bowl. The only big news coming out of Indianapolis has been that 1) Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has a very expensive commode known as the Toto Washlet Performance Toilet, and 2) NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell knee-capped Zygi Wilf.

Goodell stuck it to Vikings ownership by announcing that the NFL wants an expansion team in Los Angeles while pretty much ruling out the relocation of an existing team. Oops, somebody didn't read the memo.

Minnesotans over 25 probably don't remember that we had a Super Bowl right here on our humble tundra in 1992. That was a landmark game for several reasons, which we'll get into in a little bit. I can't recall how many people froze to death while the event was here, but I'm sure they were all Washington Redskins fans. Buffalo Bills fans were walking around without their shirts.

It hasn't always been so peaceful before the game. Over the years, there have been some amazing occurrences just before kickoff. The night before Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami, for example, Atlanta Falcons safety Eugene "the Prophet" Robinson was arrested in the downtown area for offering an undercover policewoman $40 for sexual favors. Just hours earlier Robinson, an outwardly religious type, had received the Bart Starr award for high moral character.

That was quite a mess, although I still insist it was all a misunderstanding, and Robinson was innocent. My theory is that he was lost and offered someone
$40 for directions to the hotel Coral Essex. The undercover cop simply misunderstood. Anyway, during the ensuing game he was burned for an 80-yard touchdown pass as the Falcons lost to the Broncos.

In 1991 in Tampa, and I swear this is true, two fans bought tickets from a scalper and were obviously thrilled about the prospects of going to the game. They had come all the way from Canada hoping to score tickets. They were jumping around on the sidewalk, celebrating their good fortune, when a car pulled up alongside of them. A fellow leaned out the window and asked: "Are you sure those tickets are real and not counterfeit?"

The fans stopped jumping.

"Let me see them," the fellow in the car said.

He took the tickets, looked them over and announced: "Yup, these are real." Then sped off, tickets still in hand.

Super Bowl XXVI took place at the Metrodome on Jan. 26, 1992. It was the grand finale of an amazing run of sporting events in the Twin Cities the likes of which we'll never see again. We had the World Series, Final Four, Stanley Cup Finals, U.S. Open and Super Bowl all right here and all within about a year of each other. It was unbelievable to see as this area became the sports hub of America.

The game featured the Redskins and the Bills. And both sides were impressed with how very polite we are out here. And they made it a point not to squawk about the weather, no doubt under direct orders from the league. That Washington team, under coach Joe Gibbs, was one of the most underrated of all time and maybe one of the top five ever. The Redskins won easily, 37-24, behind Canadian quarterback Mark Rypien, the cousin of former North Star Shane Churla.

How many people remember that the Bills played their first series without star running back Thurman Thomas, who couldn't find his helmet on the sideline?

Young Harry Connick Jr. sang the national anthem. At halftime, Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill entertained the crowd by skating on sheets of Teflon. Everybody here got a kick out of it, but it was the last of the "small-time" halftime shows. The halftime ratings drooped and so starting the next year the networks started bringing in big name performers such as Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson.

For the Bills, who came into the game sporting their vaunted and revolutionary no-huddle offense, it was the second of what turned out to be four consecutive Super Bowl losses. Four in a row! Only the Vikings and Broncos have lost as many, and not in a row like that.

Which reminds me: Somebody always asks around this time of year if I think the Vikings ever will get back to the Super Bowl. I always tell them "sure." The league makes tickets available to all the teams each year.

(source St. Paul Pioneer Press)

Super Bowl XLVI -- DirecTV Beach Bowl - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:22:00.001-03:00

Deion Sanders said he wasn't worried. Joe Montana went in with his game face on and Jordin Sparks just hoped sand did not end up in her eyes.

Athletes and celebrities had different strategies as they prepared to play in the sixth annual DirectTV Celebrity Beach Bowl. The event teams up stars with former and current professional athletes for a flag football game on the sand.

Assistant coach Neil Patrick Harris admitted he didn't know much about the game, so he was going to rely on his teammates to make the calls.

"I really am not competitive at all. I quite frankly don't know what is going to happen or what we are playing," the actor said with a smile. "I know it is football of some sort, but it might be flag football, touch, two-handed touch. I don't know."

Lucky for him, legend Joe Montana was on his team.

"I hate to lose," Montana said ahead of the game. "I am not very good at losing. You try to go into this as it's going to be a fun game, but as soon as you get involved ... if they score, you go, 'OK.' You have got to at least keep it competitive. I can't just go through the motions. I want to win."

Sparks arrived with her dad, Phillippi Sparks, a former New York Giant. The former "American Idol" champ says she wasn't expecting intense action.

"I know it is not tackle. They are just grabbing the flag, but who knows, we could get tripped up and stuff, so I am glad there is sand," she said. "I am nervous about it getting in my eyes if I fall but other than that, it is going to be a lot of fun. I am excited. "

As for the other big game in Indianapolis, Sanders said he would not pick the New England Patriots or the New York Giants to win on Sunday.

"I am a former player. I am not rooting for anybody. I just want a good quality game. I just want the fans to be entertained for three and a half hours. I want Madonna to come out and do the doggone thing like she can do it," he said of her halftime performance.

Other big names at the event included Peyton Manning, Chace Crawford, Cam Newton, Terrell Owens and David Arquette, who said he's been having a great time in Indianapolis.

"What I really like about Super Bowl in general is that it introduces you to another city," he said. "Indianapolis is a beautiful city a lot of people might not know about or have not visited. To come here and to meet the people and see the city, that is my favorite part actually."

(source Yahoo Sports)

Countdown to Super Bowl XLVI: Studying what might work when the SB comes to New York - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:20:00.001-03:00

He had passed the spot where fans could pose with the Lombardi Trophy. Had stared at the college draft set that provides another photo opportunity. Had stopped in front of the stage where a series of musical guests would entertain the masses. The immense N.F.L. Experience — the league’s fan-participation carnival and merchandise mart that runs during the week before the Super Bowl — was laid out before Al Kelly when a thought popped into his head.

“To ask an unglamorous question, have bathrooms been an issue?” Kelly asked. “No typical ladies’ room hassles?”

No, Kelly was told.

“But we had questions about lactation rooms,” added Mary Pat Augenthaler, the N.F.L.’s vice president for events.

That is probably not a matter that Kelly had to grapple with personally as the president of American Express. But as the chief executive of the host committee for the 2014 New York-New Jersey Super Bowl, Kelly has immersed himself in the staggering minutiae that an event of this magnitude entails. A series of walking tours — the N.F.L. Experience; Lucas Oil Stadium; the N.F.L. House, a concierge service for high rollers — gave Kelly an up-close look at Indianapolis’s so-far seamless week.

From the moment Kelly got off the plane Wednesday, he was consumed with questions like, how did the decals at the Indianapolis airport — which included a Super Bowl logo on each jetway — get attached? But in a one-hour visit to the N.F.L. Experience, Kelly dived headfirst into the mind-numbing details that keep that 900,000-square-foot behemoth functioning.

How long do people wait in line for a photograph with the Lombardi Trophy? Where do you store the slab of artificial turf that is laid down for a mini-game? What happens to the tents if there is heavy snow? Can a player refuse to let his hands and biceps be measured and cast in plaster so fans can measure themselves against them?

Who runs the memorabilia shop? What about food? How big is the theater that was constructed for a 13-minute piece by NFL Films? That mammoth edifice at the entrance to the Verizon station — what is it made of? What is Bridgestone doing with all those black mini-footballs? Is there a lot of bickering among sponsors over placement?

Kelly looked up at signage and down at carpet. He asked how long visitors stayed in the N.F.L. Experience and whether they were given a map when they arrived. And how do organizers know when they leave, so the place does not get overcrowded?

“On Monday morning, I’ll have a much better idea of how much I learned,” Kelly said. “If we pick up one or two terrific ideas or things that definitely don’t work, it’s valuable.”

Planning for the New York-area Super Bowl in 2014 remains in its earliest stages, with organizers still considering even the most remote possibilities. When Augenthaler mentioned that it may not be possible to have another Super Bowl fanfest without a zip line — the phenomenally popular thrill ride erected high above two city blocks here — the conversation turned to whether Manhattan streets could be closed off so a zip line could be installed near Times Square.

In the spring, organizers will begin to decide what will go where. That is probably when it will become clear how little might translate from Indianapolis.

“It’s not apples to apples,” said Dianna Boyce, a spokeswoman for the Indianapolis host committee.

Indianapolis has been lauded for the compactness and convenience of its layout, with all the attractions and the stadium within steps of the downtown hotels. It is, in many ways, similar to New Orleans, which will host the Super Bowl next year and which also sent a representative to Indianapolis this week.

But it is almost the exact opposite of what a New York area Super Bowl will be like. In 2014, the teams will stay and practice in New Jersey — and the game, of course, will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford — but many of the fan events will be in Manhattan, giving that Super Bowl a much more sprawling footprint than Indianapolis has. The New York Super Bowl logo even depicts the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River and a giant snowflake, a not so subtle reminder that the top priority will be to make sure a zip line will not be the only way to get around quickly.

Kelly said he was certain that New York and New Jersey officials understood the importance of clearing roads quickly if it snowed. His biggest weather-related concern is that there will be poor conditions several days before the game, which would delay flights and keep visitors, and their wallets, away. Dealing with bad weather is another thing Kelly cannot learn from Indianapolis, where temperatures reached into the 60s this week.

Kelly reached the end of the N.F.L. Experience and looked out the vast windows to see crowded sidewalks below the zip line. Organizers here created a Super Bowl village, modeling it after an Olympic village, by closing off a few streets to create a pedestrian mall. Could a village, Kelly mused, be created in Newark?

“Given that 35 percent of tickets go to the fan bases, I think a lot will look to come into Newark and day-trip it to Manhattan one or two times for a Broadway show,” Kelly said. “They’ll find it easier and more affordable in New Jersey.”

Kelly took one look at the locker-room replica in the N.F.L. Experience — which used photos taken inside the Colts’ locker room because they are the home team — and realized he would have to have photos of both the Giants and the Jets, with careful attention paid to equal use and placement.

“Believe me, I know that,” Kelly said.

The New York area does not have an indoor space big enough to house the N.F.L. Experience as it is currently constructed. But Kelly noted that exhibitions could be squeezed tighter. Kelly and the N.F.L. will also have to answer a chicken-or-the-egg question: does the experience need to have more in New York because there are so many more people in the region, or will the bounty of entertainment options available make a sprawling N.F.L. Experience less of a focal point for fans?

“The only Super Bowl that is really comparable, and I spent a lot of time talking to them, is probably Dallas,” Kelly said.

That will make those who endured the Dallas Super Bowl last year cringe. It was crippled by an ice storm, and then embarrassed by a temporary seating fiasco on game day. Kelly did not go to Dallas last year, but he said it taught him one important lesson about how to plan for poor weather.

“You have to localize it and break it into pieces,” Kelly said. “When we have to get volunteers, somebody who lives in Bergen County, you’ve got to assign to Bergen County. We’re going to have to subdivide the geography. Treat Brooklyn as an area, Newark as an area.”

On Sunday, Kelly said, he will pay close attention to how quickly fans clear security and get into the stadium. He worries that on a cold day, the wind in the Meadowlands parking lots could make a long wait to enter the stadium excruciating.

“People in our region of the country are not known for our patience,” he said.

Perhaps not. But before Kelly landed here, he knew that a Super Bowl in New York and New Jersey already had an advantage that even the flawless organization and Midwestern friendliness of Indianapolis’s week could not conjure.

“I bet Indianapolis would be liking this even more if they had a thousand more hotel rooms,” Kelly said. “And a few more restaurants.”

This article was written by Judy Battista and appeared in the New York Times.

Countdown to Super Bowl XLVI: Super Bowl spending could hit $11 billion - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:18:00.001-03:00

Pollsters are estimating a record number of people, perhaps as many 173 million, will be watching as the New York Giants take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5.

That means the event could generate significant consumer spending as sports fans head out to buy food, decorations, and perhaps even a new television to watch the two teams go head to head.

According to a survey from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association conducted by BigInsight, the average game-watcher will shell out $63.87 on game-related merchandise, apparel and snacks, up from $59.33 last year.

That means total Super Bowl spending is expected to reach as much as $11 billion.

In part, the bigger numbers likely reflect the fact that the two teams hail from the population-dense Northeast. But more Americans appear to be in partying mood, as consumer sentiment rises to an 11-month high. The survey found more people will be attending parties (27.1%) or hosting them (15.3%) compared with last year.

The event also comes on the heels of a better-than-expected holiday season that largely left electronics retailers in the dust. Stores are already advertising steep discounts for televisions, hoping to move out inventory that didn't get sold over the holidays.

About 5.1 million people are planning to buy a new television, specifically to watch the football game, according to the survey. Last year, BigInsight estimated 4.5 million people were planning to buy TVs.

And as for that other Super Bowl tradition — the commercials — nearly three-quarters of the viewers say they see them as entertainment.

The survey found 16.9% say the commercials make them aware of the advertisers' brand and another 8.4% say the commercials influence them to buy products from advertisers — the highest percentage reported in the survey's history.

This article was written by Christina Cheddar Burke and appeared in USA Today.

Countdown to Super Bowl XLVI: NBA dresses up in its Sunday best - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:16:00.002-03:00

If you’re actually paying more attention to football and not the Super Bowl commercials on Sunday, you’ll be getting the best TV announcing crew of the 2011 NFL season.

The bonus of NBC coverage – no, not Bob Costas’s hair colour – will be the team of Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth calling the shots from the booth.

The two conference championship games on CBS and FOX on Jan. 21 might have been the worst-called major sporting events by network crews. Missed calls, no insight and a general haste to jam in network promos made the CBS team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms almost unwatchable/unlistenable. On FOX, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were only marginally better. (When you yell, “Can’t you see that?” at the TV more than five times a game, the network has a problem.)

Michaels is the Maserati of play-by-play guys. There’s no creepy Buck/Aikman welcome-to-the-booth/boys-in-the-tree-house feel when the veteran calls a game. He modulates, knows when to get excited and when to shut up. If you play a favourite sports moment back in your head, it’s probably Michaels’s voice you hear, whether he called the game or not.

Collinsworth can get a little verbose, but, as opposed to Aikman or Simms, his patois seems real and his homework is generally impeccable. He passes the test as the “guy you’d like to have a beer with and watch the game.” Granted, NBC only had Sunday nights to call this NFL season, unopposed by other games, but they were the unquestioned leaders in the field.

In addition, NBC has the best sideline reporter in Michele Tafoya, a terrific studio host in Dan Patrick, a capable analyst in former New England Patriots safety Rodney Harrison … and we’re looking for something nice to say about analyst/former coach Tony Dungy, but words fail.

SELL SELL SELL

It’s too bad AMC’s Mad Men, about 1960s Madison Avenue, won’t get the chance to tackle the Super Bowl file. The marketing opportunities of the title game only gained traction in the 1970s, rising to the fever pitch the NFL now enjoys.

The event began in 1967 as a football game, but that was too simple a brief for the marketing men like Don Draper. Now, the game is subsumed by a marketing monolith where commercials and promotion are the headline performers. The Patriots and New York Giants this weekend will be a warm-up act for massive product branding. (Look out below, Naomi Klein.)

Using satellite radio, one could follow the blunt marketing behemoth as it marched its spokesmen through a production line of programs and networks this week. Story angles were shoved aside in place of former football worthies thinly disguised as hucksters for a branded product looking to use the Super Bowl as a springboard.

ESPN, the mighty American all-sports cable channel, didn’t even bother to disguise the product placement, running players such as Brett Keisel, a spokesman for Head & Shoulders, through every one of its programs in sequence through the day. (ESPN folk call this the “car wash.”)

Keisel has played in Super Bowls for the Pittsburgh Steelers but he was principally on air to flog shampoo, shepherded from show to show by a minder as he talked about his famous beard and its appearance in a TV ad.

And so it goes with America’s biggest shill-fest. It’s the pigskin version of Las Vegas, as brands are leveraged to the hilt in a virtual supermarket. Even 50-ish singer Madonna, former iconoclast, goes corporate this weekend as she performs at halftime. (Most NFL owners are geezers in their 80s and 90s, so Madonna is probably a hip young thing by their standard.)

RETRO MADNESS

What helped to turn this corporate tide was the advent of the Super Bowl commercial.

Mad Men-like efforts of the past are now as fondly remembered as touchdown throws and missed field goals in Super Bowl lore. Perhaps the Olduvai Gorge moment featured Steelers defensive tackle Mean Joe Greene in 1980 shilling for Coca-Cola, tossing his soiled jersey to a tow-headed waif.

Because anything worth doing in commercials is worth ruining, Mean Joe is back this year, flogging for Downy fabric softener with comedian Amy Sedaris in a piece so brazen you have to admire its chutzpah.

Already this week, we’ve had other lengthy glimpses of commercials that will run Sunday. Both the Honda and Acura commercials are, like the Mean Joe spot, retro efforts as actor Matthew Broderick pillages his Ferris Bueller’s Day Off legacy while comedian Jerry Seinfeld rummages up his “Soup Nazi” past to move a few cars (the cameo by The Tonight Show host Jay Leno is the funniest he’s been in 20 years).

There will be plenty more, many of which Canadians, in another Super Bowl tradition, will not see as host broadcaster CTV inserts its own commercials.

For those living near a American-border city, you can watch the U.S. feed on bunny ears, but for the rest of us huddled north of the frontier, it will be Internet peeks or waiting till Monday to see what the shilling fun was about.

Why we should feel compelled to break CRTC regulations to see TV commercials is a question for deeper thinkers than Usual Suspects. But stolen fruit – even stolen retro hucksterism – still tastes sweeter.

This article was written by Bruce Dowbiggin and appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Super Bowl XLVI - spending could hit $11 billion - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:14:00.003-03:00

The Big Game will be even bigger this year.

Pollsters are estimating a record number of people, perhaps as many 173 million, will be watching as the New York Giants take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5.

That means the event could generate significant consumer spending as sports fans head out to buy food, decorations, and perhaps even a new television to watch the two teams go head to head.

According to a survey from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association conducted by BigInsight, the average game-watcher will shell out $63.87 on game-related merchandise, apparel and snacks, up from $59.33 last year.

That means total Super Bowl spending is expected to reach as much as $11 billion.

In part, the bigger numbers likely reflect the fact that the two teams hail from the population-dense Northeast. But more Americans appear to be in partying mood, as consumer sentiment rises to an 11-month high. The survey found more people will be attending parties (27.1%) or hosting them (15.3%) compared with last year.

The event also comes on the heels of a better-than-expected holiday season that largely left electronics retailers in the dust. Stores are already advertising steep discounts for televisions, hoping to move out inventory that didn't get sold over the holidays.

About 5.1 million people are planning to buy a new television, specifically to watch the football game, according to the survey. Last year, BigInsight estimated 4.5 million people were planning to buy TVs.

And as for that other Super Bowl tradition — the commercials — nearly three-quarters of the viewers say they see them as entertainment.

The survey found 16.9% say the commercials make them aware of the advertisers' brand and another 8.4% say the commercials influence them to buy products from advertisers — the highest percentage reported in the survey's history.

(source CNBC)

Super Bowl XLVI - is great, but it won't guarantee another - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:12:00.002-03:00

The following message is addressed to the 32 NFL owners in attendance here at Super Bowl XLVI (so if you're not an NFL owner, you can pass right over this next paragraph):

When considering Indianapolis as a future Super Bowl host city, please know that our February weather is like this every year. Actually, it's usually a bit warmer than this. Thank you.

Ordinary readers are now welcome back to this column.

With just one day to go before Super Bowl XLVI between the New England Patriots and New York Giants, it's safe to suggest that Indianapolis already has won this Super Bowl.

In a blowout.

• SUPER COVERAGE: Read more stories about the teams, fans, concerts, parties, with photos and video.

How good has it been so far? It has been this good:

Reporters aren't complaining.

Except maybe about some sketchy wireless service in the media room. But reporters -- and I am at the front of the line -- are notorious complainers. We can show you Olympic gold medals for complaining, most of them from the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

"The last three or four years, I've been on Radio Row at Super Bowls, telling people how great our Super Bowl was going to be in Indianapolis," Mayor Greg Ballard said. "Now, I go by Radio Row, and those same people are telling me how great it's been."

The biggest complaint I've heard from my brethren so far is, "You people are too nice."

I respond to this complaint by cursing them out, because I want them to feel like they're back home in New York or Boston.

I don't know if Indianapolis will ever get another Super Bowl. When I addressed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about it Friday, he lauded Indy but gave a rather tepid response, noting how it's only the fourth quarter of Indy's Super Bowl experience.

Asked if Indy is a viable option in future years, he said, "Sure it is. We're here and they're doing a fantastic job. We've got a weekend still to go and a game to put on. I know everybody in Indianapolis is focused on the future. But we want to make sure this week turns out to be what everyone has worked so hard for."

Even if the NFL looks at Indianapolis once again, I don't know if there's enough corporate money to go around a second time. Remember, this thing has been put together with roughly $28 million in corporate dollars, with as few tax dollars as humanly possible.

That said, Indianapolis has done nothing to take itself out of the equation for future Super Bowls. This has been a bravura performance, from the leaders to the volunteers, from the big shows to the little details.

True, it has been elbow-to-elbow crowded in some places, prices are through the roof and it's a challenge to get a dinner reservation, but having done about 25 of these, I'm telling you, that's normal in Miami, New Orleans and everywhere else this event is held. The host committee has done a good job tweaking things on a daily basis, especially opening up the streets around the Super Bowl Village to ease congestion.

This hasn't just been the best northern Super Bowl, this has been one of the best Super Bowls, period.

And yes, the weather has helped.

Owners, the previous sentence was a mistake. As I said, it's always like this in early February. Always. Don't let those tanning salons fool you.

The only thing that might mitigate against a Super Bowl return, besides corporate Indy's possible reluctance to do this again, would be the smallish, 68,000-seat capacity at Lucas Oil Stadium, the fourth-smallest in Super Bowl history.

As bad as Dallas was, JerryWorld accommodated more than 100,000 fannies, even if some of the seats were constructed out of Legos and unusable by anybody weighing more than 16 pounds.

If the owners are concerned solely about the bottom-line dollars from game day, they will never come back to Indy. But if they're truly concerned about the quality of the fan experience, they will look hard at coming back here a second time and beyond.

There has been only one blemish on the Indianapolis Super Bowl: the continuing melodrama involving Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, which took another turn Thursday with the news he has been cleared by doctors to play. Soon thereafter, Colts owner Jim Irsay tweeted that Manning hasn't been cleared to play by the team, followed by a Friday statement reiterating that fact.

My question is, if Manning wanted to get that news out (and you know it came from his camp), why not either, A) send out a statement through the team or, B) wait until Monday to drop that little bombshell rather than steal the Super Bowl headlines?

It was wrong for Irsay to call Manning a "politician" and overreact to Manning's Star interview, and it was wrong for the Manning camp to leak this story on Thursday of Super Bowl week.

The host committee prepared for every conceivable weather event this week; it never imagined it would be hit with a plague of Peyton Manning stories.

It reached the point that a reporter specifically asked Goodell if he was concerned that all this Manning news has overwhelmed the Super Bowl.

Goodell, a brilliant politician like his father, naturally said no.

Like most politicians, he wasn't quite telling the truth.

The league doesn't like this and shouldn't like this.

Ultimately, this latest news changes nothing; the Colts are still going to move on with quarterback Andrew Luck, the likely No. 1 overall draft pick. But it puts even more public pressure on Irsay to find a way to bring back Manning.

This is not ending well, and won't end well. And it's a damned shame.

(See? This was supposed to be a column on the Indy Super Bowl performance, and it morphed into Manning talk.)

But back to the original column, and another entreaty meant for the NFL owners' eyes only:

Next time, bring your golf clubs. But leave the Speedos at home.

(source Indianapolis Star)

Super Bowl XLVI - how Tweet it is - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:09:00.001-03:00

When it comes to football fame, Rich Ohrnberger falls smack-dab on the opposite end of the spectrum from glamorous superstar quarterback Tom Brady. He’s 25 years old, a 6-foot-2-inch, 300-pound offensive lineman who has played five games in three seasons, none this year because of injury.

He’s presently obscure, and his NFL future may be uncertain. But on Twitter, the social network that has accumulated more than 300 million users worldwide, he’s a budding star.

In monitoring the accounts of more than 20 Patriots players during the two-week buildup to Super Bowl XLVI, it wasn’t social-media savvy wide receiver Chad Ochocinco (his @ochocinco account has more than 3.2 million followers) or gregarious tight end Rob Gronkowski (@RobGronkowski, more than 217,000 followers) who did the most with the allotted 140 characters Twitter permits per comment, or tweet.

It was Ohrnberger, which comes as no surprise to his teammates. Both Gronkowski and receiver Julian Edelman insisted this week that Ohrnberger is the funniest Patriot.

“He’s like Will Ferrell, he’s that funny,’’ Edelman said.

Ohrnberger has approximately 23,000 followers and a standup comic’s knack for a self-deprecating one-liner. A few of his recent gems:

I think Wesley Snipes would most accurately portray me in a movie

Today’s outfit: No-slip hospital socks, sweats (hole in crotch), a joke tuxedo thong, and a womens volleyball tshirt... I should do laundry

I blame cooler ranch doritos and marvel comics for my lack of female companionship until the 10th grade

“It’s just something I have fun with,’’ said Ohrnberger, who missed the entire season because of a head injury. “I don’t mind making fun of myself, obviously, and there’s a pretty good back and forth on Twitter. I get to try out some material. I’m not Ocho in terms of popularity or anything, but I enjoy it.’’

“Ocho’’ would be Ochocinco, a decorated performer for more than a decade with the Cincinnati Bengals who has endured a disappointing first season with the Patriots. He still remains a Twitter superstar, bantering good-naturedly with fans, reiterating his love of the International House of Pancakes, or riffing on his fear of appearing on a certain exploitative daytime talk show.

When asked this week by a follower which is more pressure, trying to make a field goal or a free throw with a game hanging in the balance, he replied:

Waiting for pregnancy test results on ‘Maury.’

Star wide receiver Wes Welker, who has the tagline “professional tweeter that wastes his talents playing American Football’’ on his account, is another Patriot who shows his humorous side on Twitter. He has more than 300,000 followers despite not starting his @WesWelker account until December, at Ochocinco’s urging. Welker, who has documented to comedic effect his progress in growing a mustache, has not tweeted since Jan. 25, but he did offer this after the Patriots’ victory over the Ravens in the AFC Championship game.

Woke up this am, and looked in the mirror. I rubbed my eyes, and saw a beautiful Stache! And I was instantly reminded. Were going to the SB!

Wide receiver Deion Branch (@Branch84) favors inspirational quotes. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take - Wayne Gretzky. Gronkowski practices his interpretation of Spanish and is generous with the exclamation points. Hola!!! Me llamo Roberto! Yo soy muy inteligente! buena noche! And defensive lineman Kyle Love (@KyleLove74) makes it clear he has no interest in providing an injury report on his teammates. I will not answer questions about gronk so don’t ask.

Some accounts are more inane than amusing, and proper grammar can be at a premium. (Ochocinco says he takes pride in his spelling.) But collectively, the quiet confidence and professionalism that the Patriots project during interviews tends to come through on Twitter. There’s little bragging or trash talking, and it’s refreshing to discover that there is a sense of gratitude among many Patriots who can’t help but reflect on the journey that brought them to this moment.

And I’m Dreamin...... Ten years ago none of this was even in site!! =@ #TruStory, tweeted linebacker Brandon Spikes (@BrandonSpikes55)

Then there is Sterling Moore, who four years ago was attending junior college and working part time at Best Buy. He went on to play football at Southern Methodist, but he was not drafted out of college and was cut by the mediocre Oakland Raiders earlier this season. But the rookie caught on with the Patriots and made an impression, and it was Moore who came up with a pair of crucial defensive plays late in the AFC Championship game. A few days later, he tweeted:

Just got recognized in Best Buy. Things have come full circle lol

By the way, Tom Brady is not on Twitter. But to at least one fan, linebacker Dane Fletcher made a pretty reasonable facsimile for the quarterback.

(source Boston Globe)

Super Bowl XLVI -- on a dime - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:07:00.002-03:00

Does $1,244 sound like a Super Bowl bargain if it includes a game ticket, hotel reservations, and airfare? It should, because it is.

The Fletchers, a family from Gardner, Mass., feel blessed that they are paying just over $1,000 a person, considering it is a pittance compared with what they could be shelling out, with some game tickets alone costing upward of $2,750, well over face value.

They cut corners to arrive in Indianapolis without paying even more, flying into Pittsburgh for $150 a person, borrowing a friend’s car, and driving the six hours to Indianapolis to avoid the $1,100 going rate for plane tickets. And the family - father, mother, son, and son’s girlfriend - are staying in a hotel in Greenfield, a suburb 30 minutes west of the city. The tickets were by far their biggest coup, face value ($900) for field level, end zone seats on the Patriots sideline.

“We were at the right place at the right time,’’ Jim Fletcher quipped as he and his family, fresh off the road and ready to party, enjoyed a beer at a local Pats pub. Without going into too much detail, his 26-year-old son, Billy, explained it was the result of a friend-of-a-friend connection.

Even with most hotel rates jumping Thursday to $500 a night - and that’s a two-star option - and parking near Lucas Oil Stadium approaching $500 a spot on game day, it is possible to do the Super Bowl on a dime, lots of dimes. It just depends on the compromises fans are willing to make to experience, live and in person, America’s largest sporting event, or at least the parties, concerts, and revelry it spawns.

The budget-conscious fan has options here that include parking an RV on church grounds, a golf course, or someone’s yard. Some fans are staying with friends who live in central Indiana. And others who don’t have tickets but live not far away plan to drive in just for game day “to be in the atmosphere and get a contact high,’’ as Patriots fan Terri Bey of Lexington, Ky., put it.

Roberts Park United Methodist Church, about a mile and a half from the stadium, is renting weekend parking space to RVs for $200 to $240, depending on the size of the vehicle.

“We’ve got no hookups or amenities for the RVs. We just have the spot,’’ said Richard Smith, the church’s business administrator. Still, he said, two people have paid for a space and a third reserved a slot.

“We had a call from a fellow who said he’s in Massachusetts and his partner lives in Florida and they plan to fly to Chicago, rent an RV, and park it in our lot,’’ Smith said.

Bey, the 44-year-old Pats fan, needs parking for just one day. She intends to make the three-hour drive to Indianapolis after an early Sunday church service, even though she doesn’t have game tickets. The native New Yorker and horse racing aficionado fell in love with the New England football team when she heard Bill Belichick used the story of thoroughbred Tiznow’s 2001 Breeders’ Cup Classic win to inspire his team.

She plans to wear her No. 12 Tom Brady jersey and watch the game at a local sports bar, but she suffered sticker shock after checking parking websites and seeing prices from $49 a mile away from the stadium to $499 just a few feet from where the Patriots and New York Giants will face off.

“They’re gouging people,’’ she said by phone yesterday. “Why? For a parking spot.’’

Linda and Bob Ritchie don’t have to worry about parking on game day. The Chelmsford, Mass., couple drove into town Thursday and plan on watching the game at friend Marcia Reed’s house, which, Reed said, is in the same neighborhood as Larry Bird’s home.

The Ritchies planned this trip to Indianapolis long before the Patriots earned the right to play in the championship game - three years ago, when it was first announced that the capital of Indiana would host the megawatt sporting event.

“We had to come to experience this,’’ Linda Ritchie, 65, said, adding that the couple figured they would just pass through on their snowbird pilgrimage to Florida.

Reed and Bob Ritchie have been friends since childhood, growing up on the same street in Lynnfield, Mass. The Super Bowl seemed like fun and a great way to visit an old friend. The fact that the Patriots are playing is a bonus, they said.

“We were taking our chances,’’ Bob, 66, quipped outside the JW Marriott, where the trio was trying to make its way in to watch celebrities and athletes give interviews along the famed Radio Row.

The super fans - Reed had the Patriots logo painted on her thumbnails and stickers on her cheeks - had already watched the live broadcast of the “Today’’ show in Super Bowl Village.

“We’re just here for the party,’’ said Linda, 65.

(source Boston Globe)

Super Bowl XLVI -- party on - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:04:00.001-03:00

Super Bowl Sunday figures to be super-caloric for many people.

According to the Wall Street Journal, here are some of the consumption estimates from the food industry:

There will be more than 1.25 billion chicken wings eaten Sunday, or four apiece for every man, woman and child in the U.S. (And some of which will wind up in chicken wing cupcakes.)

4.4 million pizzas will be ordered from Pizza Hut, Domino's and Papa John's.

48 million people will have takeout or delivery food.

On the healthier side, 71.4 million pounds of avocados will be eaten as the nation's intake of guacomole peaks. Also, less beer will be drunk on Super Sunday than what gets swilled on warm-weather holidays like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day or Labor Day.

And it will be a very good day for carrot farmers, who see a 25-28% boost in sales for the Super Bowl.

This article was written by Tom Weir and appeared in USA Today.

Super Bowl XLVI – a New England Patriot - Ingles

2012-02-05T08:01:00.000-03:00

On the last day of the 1993 NFL regular season, Patriots players and die-hard fans seemed resigned to losing their team. Absentee owner James Orthwein, a Missouri native who had bought the club two years earlier, intended to move it to St. Louis, which had lost the Cardinals in '88. "We were as good as gone," said Patriots linebacker Andre Tippett. But the fans wouldn't go down without a fight. Though they had the league's worst team (13--50 over four seasons heading into that game, against playoff-contending Miami) and worst venue (dumpy, no-frills Foxboro Stadium), damn it, this was still their bad team and their crappy stadium. Before the game they burned empty cases of Budweiser in the windswept parking lots. (Orthwein was a great-grandson of brewing mogul Adolphus Busch and sat on the board of the St. Louis--based brewing company.) And once the game ended, victoriously, on a Drew Bledsoe overtime touchdown pass to Michael Timpson, the fans wouldn't leave. "Don't take our team!" they chanted. "Don't take our team!"

Robert Kraft, the owner of Foxboro Stadium, was getting in an elevator when he heard the crowd. It had been a frenzied time for Kraft and his family, as they watched Orthwein shop the Patriots to prospective owners who would take the team to St. Louis. Kraft was a potential buyer, but he felt the deck was stacked against him because he would keep the Patriots in New England. As the elevator door closed, he turned to his son Jonathan and said, "There's no way we're not winning this."

There are decisions people make—often emotional, often against the wishes of those they trust most—that radically shape their future. Robert Kraft has made three of them involving the Patriots. And if any of those had gone the other way, chances are very good that the Patriots would not be the winningest team in the NFL since 1994, and would not be playing in their fifth Super Bowl in the last 11 seasons on Sunday in Indianapolis.

The Patriots morphed from laughingstock to the best franchise in football because at three critical junctures Kraft didn't do the logical thing. He did what something inside him said to do. "I've been around Mr. Kraft a lot when he's got all these spreadsheets and data in front of him," says quarterback Tom Brady. "But it's his instincts that he really trusts. He goes with his gut. And look at his track record—he's always right."

DECISION 1: Overspending for a bad team

A native of the tony Boston suburb of Brookline, Kraft took his four sons to countless Patriots games over the years. He had built a fortune in the paper and packaging business, and with that money came the ability to indulge a dream: He wanted to own his hometown football team. Kraft first tried to buy the Patriots in 1986, but the cash-strapped Sullivan family eventually sold to Victor Kiam. In 1989, however, Kraft bought the lease to Foxboro Stadium out of bankruptcy.

As it became more clear that Orthwein, who had little interest in owning and running a football team, would steer the club to St. Louis, Kraft broke the news to his wife, Myra, in the summer of 1993 on a walk on the beach in Cape Cod. "I told her, 'I'm going to put a bid in for the team,'" Kraft recalled in a three-hour interview with SI at his Brookline home in January. "She didn't think it was a very good business idea. To put it mildly."

But Kraft plowed forward with a seven-man team led by Jonathan, a Harvard Business School grad, that would determine how much they'd bid. The committee came to the conclusion that the Patriots—not including the stadium or lease—were worth about $115 million. "But," Kraft said, "I figured I'd go to 120 or 125 million if I had to." Summoned to St. Louis to make a final offer with other suitors three weeks after the 1993 season finale, Kraft bid $125 million. When Orthwein and his advisers declared that none of the bids were sufficient, Kraft said, in essence, tell us what you want for the team. Orthwein's advisers came back with a number: $172 million.

"Was I scared?" Kraft said. "Yes, I was scared. But this was my shot. How many times in life do you get your shot to do something you desperately want to do? Logic said no. Instinct said yes. Also, things kept flashing through my mind. The Boston Braves had left, and no team ever replaced them. My sons were getting to an age where smart sons move to take good business opportunities [elsewhere], and I wanted my family to stay intact here. I figured this could be a good family business."

After gulping hard at the figure he was quoted, Kraft said yes. For the highest price in the history of American sports, he now owned a bad football team that played in an el cheapo stadium. The tough part—telling Myra—was still to come.

Over the past six months Kraft's anguish over the death in July of his wife of 48 years has been continually evident. In his interview with SI he had to stop to compose himself four times when Myra's name came up—including in the discussion about his decision to buy the team.

"When I told her, she thought I was crazy," Kraft recalled, sitting at his kitchen table. "Angry? Yeah. She couldn't believe I'd done that. It was a ridiculous number. It's the only time she questioned my business judgment in all the years we were married. Every marriage has some hard times, and I can tell you that was a tough night."

Pause. Fifteen seconds.

"That night, to tell you the kind of person my sweetheart was, she said to me ..."

Pause. Five seconds.

" ...'You have to promise me our charitable donations will not be reduced.' I promised her that, and we moved on. Now, today, it's so tough, still. This thing with Myra—everything else is paper clips. Her perspective on what was important in life was such an inspiration."

There were fits and starts to be sure: In 1999 Kraft, seeking a new stadium, announced he would move the team to Hartford, then reversed course. And in the downturn after 9/11, funding for a privately constructed new stadium in Foxborough nearly collapsed. But Kraft weathered the storms and saw the project to completion. Gillette Stadium opened for football in the fall of 2002, when the Patriots were—thanks largely to another gutsy call Kraft had made nearly three years earlier—the reigning Super Bowl champs.

DECISION 2: Hiring Belichick

It's no secret that Kraft and Bill Parcells, the coach he inherited when he bought the team, had their moments of hostility. Parcells wanted authority to draft players, while Kraft preferred a team approach, with the personnel department having final say. That eventually led to an ugly breakup after the 1996 season. But something else good came out of that season, beyond the team's first Super Bowl appearance: Kraft got to know Belichick.

"Bill Parcells came to me and said there was someone he wanted to add to the staff, Bill Belichick, and he wanted me to meet him," said Kraft. "We were already over our coaching budget, but I met him and liked him right away. I drilled him with questions, and I liked what I heard."

Things turned bitter when Kraft learned that Parcells wanted to leave after the season to coach the Jets. After the Super Bowl loss to the Packers, when the Patriots' staff was dissolving, Kraft had a choice: keep Belichick, perhaps even as head coach, or hire new blood. "I wrestled with it," Kraft said. "But I had lost the trust with Parcells, and he and Bill were tied at the hip. They were together for so long. Could I trust [Belichick]? I decided I couldn't, at the time. Everything in life is timing. Myra and I went out to lunch with him and Debby [Belichick's then wife], and I explained it. When I left there, I thought maybe there'd be a time we might work together in the future."

Belichick followed Parcells to the Meadowlands, and the Jets signed him to a contract with an "heir clause" that would give him the head coaching job whenever Parcells stepped down. As an additional reward—and, some within the Jets' organization thought, a ploy to ensure Belichick stayed on—owner Leon Hess gave Belichick a $1 million bonus, unprompted, in January '99. But Hess died in May of that year, and the ownership situation with the Jets became muddled. When Parcells announced on Jan. 3, 2000, that he was resigning, Belichick took over—for one day. On Jan. 4 he sent his infamous letter to club management: "I resign as HC of the NYJ."

In New England, Kraft had fired coach Pete Carroll on Jan. 3, but before the Parcells announcement. "I made sure we faxed in a request for permission that day to interview Belichick—when Parcells was still the coach," says Jonathan Kraft. When the Patriots' interest in Belichick surfaced, friends around the league called Robert Kraft unprompted to ask him what in the world he was thinking in pursuing the diffident Belichick, who'd made more than his share of enemies in a five-year 37--45 run with the Browns a decade earlier. One associate sent Kraft a tape of memorable and/or monosyllabic moments from Belichick's press conferences in Cleveland.

Kraft was undeterred. Though he felt the Patriots had the right to freely hire Belichick because they'd requested permission before it was announced that Parcells was quitting, commissioner Paul Tagliabue ruled that the Patriots would have to pay the Jets compensation. Irony of ironies: Parcells, who stayed on to run the Jets' front office, and Kraft were the ones who had to hammer out the deal. "When [Parcells] called to discuss it," Kraft said, "my secretary walked into my office and said, 'Darth Vader's on the phone.' I knew exactly who she meant." Finally they agreed. Belichick cost New England its first-round draft choice in 2000.

That wasn't the only first-round pick Belichick cost New England. Commissioner Roger Goodell docked the Pats a 2008 first-rounder as partial sanction for the Spygate scandal. But those two first-rounders were small price to pay for a coach who has averaged 12.9 wins a year, including playoffs, and led the Patriots to five Super Bowls in his 12 seasons. Belichick, a latter-day Monty Hall when it comes to dealing current draft picks for better ones down the road, has ensured that the flow of quality talent won't be stemmed anytime soon. And friends say he has no plans to quit coaching. (Belichick declined to be interviewed for this story.)

"The key to life," said Kraft, "is you try to see things other people can't see. This league is set up for everyone to go 8--8. How do you differentiate? You have to be bold in any business and do things you take a lot of criticism for but you believe are right."

Which brings us to Tom Brady.

DECISION 3: Jettisoning the highest-paid player in football, in his prime

This call is less tough—though it isn't exactly an easy move to trade a prolific quarterback within the division in favor of a sixth-rounder who still had question marks. But a year after Belichick took Brady with the 199th pick in 2000, Kraft could tell that the coach was smitten with Brady and not thrilled with Bledsoe, who improvised too much for the liking of Belichick and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis during a 5--11 season in 2000. Meanwhile, Belichick found Brady to be a sponge, and it was becoming apparent that his arm was stronger than scouts had seen during the predraft process. Brady lived for the game, twice winning a parking space awarded to the player with the best off-season workout effort. And the kid was confident. He was walking out of the old stadium to his car one day shortly after the draft, pizza box (that evening's dinner) under one arm, when he encountered the owner for the first time.

"He looked me right in the eye," Robert Kraft recalled, "and said to me, 'Mr. Kraft, hi, I'm Tom Brady. I just wanted to tell you I'm the best decision your franchise has ever made.'"

In 2001 Brady replaced the injured Bledsoe with the Patriots 0--2 and quarterbacked an underdog team to a stunning Super Bowl victory over St. Louis. The next spring Belichick wanted Brady to play over Bledsoe. "You'd better be right," Kraft told him in a staff meeting. When the Bills offered a first-round pick for Bledsoe, Kraft had to okay it—and he did. "I love the guy," Kraft said of Bledsoe. "That was a tough one. But you've got to back your key managers when they make a decision."

Bledsoe lasted three unspectacular seasons in Buffalo, winning 23 games, none in the playoffs, with a plus-12 touchdown-to-interception differential. Brady in those three years: 43 wins, two Super Bowl victories and 47 more touchdown passes than interceptions.

This past year Kraft was one of 10 owners who helped negotiate the decade-long labor agreement that was hammered out in July. As chair of the league's broadcast committee he took the lead in extending the NFL's network deals through 2022. Those jobs helped him fill his time as he coped with Myra's death. "The way he does business," said Patriots union rep Matt Light, "is it's never a pissing contest. In the labor deal he said the commonsense thing: 'Let's get the lawyers out of the room.' And they did, and it got done."

While difficult, those CBA and TV deals were, in many ways, logical business developments emanating from the sport that laps all others in popularity today. Buying the Patriots? Hiring Belichick? Those were tougher calls, the kind it's become Kraft's business to make. "In this game," he said on Sunday night, after the Patriots had arrived in Indianapolis for their sixth Super Bowl under Kraft, "you better take some risks—or you'll have a nice team, and once every 10 or 20 years you'll be good. That's not what I want to be about."

(source Peter King SI.com)

Super Bowl XLVI – Remembering the Patriots' first lady - Ingles

2012-02-05T07:58:00.002-03:00

There is a forest of family photographs in Robert Kraft's office at Gillette Stadium.

This one, of his late wife, Myra, is a sweet slice of slapstick: She's well into her 50s, a spirited sprite, but wears a New England Patriots cheerleading outfit. And shakes those pompoms for all she's worth. The goofy smile, the arched eyebrows, the zest in her eyes, well, those are some of the things her husband of 48 years adored most.

"I love that picture," he explained in a soft, unsteady voice. "She borrowed [the outfit] for a surprise birthday party -- and it was quite a surprise."

Kraft paused, his eyes misting over, and smiled. He had always believed she would outlive him by 30 years.

"She was a special, special lady," he said.

Myra Hiatt Kraft died in July. She was 68.

The past year has presented the owner of the Patriots a series of soaring peaks and harrowingly deep valleys that most of us would have difficulty imagining. Myra was fighting an unwinnable battle with ovarian cancer, the $9 billion-per-year behemoth that is the National Football League shut down, then dramatically, five days after Myra's death, reopened for business with Kraft playing a critical role. And now, perhaps appropriately, the Patriots will play the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.

"Yeah, it's amazing," Giants owner John Mara said Monday in Indianapolis. "You can't make it up. I'm happy that they made the Super Bowl, happy for the entire family after what they went through. They've had so much success up there, and a lot of it is tied to the way he operates his business."

As Jonathan Kraft, the oldest son of Robert and Myra, will tell you, "Anything my father has achieved in life, was a joint effort with my mother. She had a hand in everything he did."

She still does.

All season long the players have worn Myra's initials, MHK, in tribute on their jerseys and they will carry her memory again in Indianapolis. It is not a coincidence that the patch is just above their hearts.

"We play a game, but this game is really small in the grand scheme of life," said Patriots special-teams captain Matthew Slater. "What she did was really shine a light on what's valuable, what's important. She really cared about her fellow human beings. She was so selfless in the way she carried herself. She had a great heart."

A ferocious force for good

He grew up in Brookline, on the southwest edge of Boston. She was from Worcester. She was 19 when she proposed on their first date. They were married a year later in June 1963, just after he graduated from Columbia University. She was the daughter of Jacob and Frances Hiatt, noted philanthropists. He started out working for her father and later founded one of the world's most successful paper and packaging companies.

Football, in those days, was not one of their shared passions. Robert had Patriots season tickets in Section 217 at old Schaefer Stadium, but Myra never went to the games. Those Sundays when the Patriots played at home were her quiet time; she'd curl up on the couch and do The New York Times crossword puzzle. Or read one of the three or four books she averaged each week.

In 1994, Robert bought the Patriots -- a team that had gone 19-61 the previous five years -- for $172 million. Myra was worried the demands of an NFL team might force them to cut back on their already impressive largesse. As it turned out, she needn't have stressed. The Patriots became a powerful platform for her outrageous good works.

Five years ago, Fortune Magazine estimated the family's worth at $1.3 billion. In the preceding four years alone, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Krafts gave more than $100 million to charity.

It's easy, she freely acknowledged, to write a check. It's another thing to put in the time. She was the first female president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, from 1995 to 2002. She was also the president of the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation and served on numerous boards. She was an irresistible force for New England arts and education, women's and U.S.-Israel issues, quality health care and children. After she got sick, she helped create the NFL's "Kick Cancer" campaign in 2010.

At the same time, she was a powerful influence on the Patriots' organization. She didn't often get involved with roster decisions, but in 1996, after the Patriots drafted Nebraska defensive tackle Christian Peter, Myra -- after learning of his history of violence against women -- asked Robert to reconsider. Demanded, actually. Peter was released, the first time in NFL history a drafted player was waived before training camp.

"She was a warrior, a tough young lady," said defensive tackle Vince Wilfork. "One of the biggest hearts you can imagine. The things she did for people, it went beyond camera and it wasn't all about the media. She just did a lot for people.

"She wanted to be out in the community. With people that make a difference, going to the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, going to these shelters, all the type of places that need help. She was right in the middle of it. She branded us for life."

Myra made it a point to get to know the players. She worked with the wives, urging them to use their time and resources to give back to those less fortunate.

"The legacy that she always wanted to leave behind was that these guys are great on the field but look at what they've done to help this community," said left tackle Matt Light. "It's been an awesome thing to be a part of as a player."

Robert Kraft remains his wife's greatest champion.

"She cared about people -- all people," he explained. "And doing random acts of kindness. I don't think there's enough of that in this world. She was the No. 1 volunteer. That's what makes this country great. She personified it."

Added son Jonathan, "Once she raised the four of us, she focused her attention on improving the lives of others. Given the amount of mail we've gotten from people we didn't even know about, she touched the lives of so many people. So many people, 365 days a year, not just the men in our locker room."

Finding the finish line

Like a young, ambitious senator, Robert Kraft worked his way up through one of the most exclusive clubs in existence. His team won three Super Bowls in four years, played in a sparkling state-of-the-art stadium he built without public funding, and he enjoyed an increasing role in league matters. His specialty was television -- and those weighty negotiations that make the NFL one of the richest sports leagues in the world.

But when the lockout arrived last March, Myra was already sadly wasted and weary. Robert spent most of his time by her bedside in the final months, at home in Brookline and at the hospital, but she knew he had a greater purpose. Myra insisted he attend the important negotiating sessions between the owners and the players. He couldn't bear to be away from her; he'd take his private jet and fly back that same night.

"No," said John Mara, the Giants' owner, "I can't imagine having to go through that gut-wrenching time. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. A lot of the time, I remember, it was therapeutic for him to be able to do that.

"But let me say this: I don't think we would have gotten to the finish line without him."

Kraft was dealing with two different groups: the NFL Players Association and a faction of hard-line owners, who wanted complete capitulation from the players in a toughly negotiated collective bargaining agreement. Kraft worked hard to get to know DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA's executive director. On several occasions, he offered to fly him to negotiations on his jet.

It was Kraft who pushed to discuss some of the more complicated issues in small groups that didn't include the lawyers. He played a key role in urging the owners to make concessions at critical times. He repeatedly stressed the need to leave emotions at the door and take the long view.

"Bad deals wind up imploding over time," Mara said. "He said, 'We need a long-term deal that's good for both sides.' He kept drilling that message, over and over again. I believe the players bought into that. There was a level of trust on behalf of the players when he said, 'We're not going to give you a bad deal.'"

Back on July 20, Myra finally lost her 18-month fight. One day later, the owners announced a settlement. Four days after that, in a joint news conference in Washington, D.C., the players accepted the deal.

Colts center Jeff Saturday, one of the leading players involved in negotiations, cited Myra Kraft.

"Who," Saturday said, "even in her weakest moment, allowed Mr. Kraft to come and fight this out. Without him, this deal does not get done."

After 132 days of infighting, legal maneuvering and some charged rhetoric, Saturday wrapped an arm around Kraft, who put his head on his shoulder. It endures as the most poignant image of the lockout and signaled that the healing had already begun.

"I was standing right behind them," Mara said. "It was nice of Jeff to do that and I know Robert appreciated it. That was a very, very difficult period for him. I remember in the days after the funeral talking to him when he was having a tough time getting through a few sentences."

Kraft and Mara were widely recognized as the two owners most instrumental in carving out a labor peace. Some would say that six months later it is poetic justice their teams are the last two playing.

A higher power?

The Patriots players and coaches, keen to pay tribute to Myra toward the end of the season, turned to Light. He commissioned a painting by local artist Brian Fox, who had done some work for his foundation. It depicts a huddle of Patriots reaching skyward toward the initials MHK and a Patriots logo.

Light presented the painting to Kraft on Christmas Eve after the Patriots beat the Dolphins and it was later moved to his office. The following week, with the Patriots trailing the Buffalo Bills 21-0 in the final regular-season game, Kraft -- a deeply spiritual man -- had an idea. He directed his chief of staff, Al Labelle, to move the painting into the Patriots' locker room, where it was placed on an easel.

"In the middle of the locker room," Jonathan Kraft said, "so both the offense and defense could see it. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. It was just there."

A sweet, sentimental gesture? Maybe it was something more. The Patriots scored 49 unanswered points and haven't lost since. The painting is with the team in Indianapolis and will be prominently displayed in their locker room at Lucas Oil Stadium when they meet the Giants.

In the AFC Championship Game, BenJarvus Green-Ellis broke a 3-all tie in the second quarter with a 7-yard run. He dropped the ball in the end zone, touched his MHK patch, then his face mask as if to give the woman the players called "Mama" a kiss, then pointed skyward.

"It was me thinking about the whole team and how we feel about Mr. Kraft and his family and how we think about his wife," Green-Ellis said last week. "Just being there for him, just showing him we love him."

When Billy Cundiff's 32-yard field goal attempt skittered wide left -- a kick that should have forced overtime -- the Patriots were 23-20 winners over the Baltimore Ravens. The players will tell you, to a man, that Myra Kraft was responsible, that their little cheerleader is still cheering.

"I just hope she can blow one of mine in if it starts going the other way in Indy," said Patriots place-kicker Stephen Gostkowski, who had three field goals against Baltimore. "Crazy things happen in sports, and if it gives people a reason to believe, then that is cool."

When the clock ran out, Kraft hugged longtime Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi in his suite. Later, standing on a podium at midfield and clutching the Lamar Hunt Trophy with his left hand, Kraft touched his MHK lapel pin, kissed his finger and pointed to the sky with his right. This was a better alternative, he would explain, than breaking down in front of millions watching at home.

"The emotion of losing my mother, his best friend, the magnitude of that, that loss dwarfs something like being in the Super Bowl," Jonathan Kraft said. "The professional accomplishment is meaningful in day-to-day life, but in life, L-I-F-E, nothing approaches that loss. He gets through all this because he's somebody that's mentally tough, as mentally tough as anybody I know."

Four days later, sitting in the visiting locker room at Gillette Stadium for a television interview -- about 100 yards from where he paid that tribute to Myra -- Kraft did it again.

"I think we had an angel smiling down on us that day," he said. "I think the spirit of my sweetheart pervades our locker room and our team this year. I really do."

In the 18 seasons he has owned the franchise, the Patriots are 212-104. That's more victories in that span than any other team.

"This terrible cancer came," Kraft said, his voice trailing off. "So ... don't take your loved ones for granted. Make sure they know you love them. She was quiet, petite of stature, but had the heart of a lion. Or lioness, I guess I should say."

And then, finally, Robert Kraft laughed.

"She was a very strong lady," he said. "I was lucky to have her by my side."

(source ESPN)

New York Giants practice pool report - Ingles

2012-02-04T10:29:00.002-03:00

Friday, Feb. 3, 2012

By Peter King
Pro Football Writers of America

INDIANAPOLIS—After practicing the first two days of the New York Giants’ work week at Super Bowl XLVI, running back Ahmad Bradshaw was held out of Friday’s practice because his injured right foot “was a little sore,’’ coach Tom Coughlin said.

“But he’s okay,’’ Coughlin said after the Giants’ 70-minute afternoon practice at the University of Indianapolis’ practice bubble. “He’ll be ready. He’ll be listed as probable. In fact, I don’t believe we’ll have anyone listed as questionable for the game.’’

Running backs Brandon Jacobs and D.J. Ware took the repetitions against the Giants’ scout team, simulating the Patriots, during Friday’s padless drills; the players wore shorts and helmets. Bradshaw was present, and dressed, but did nothing besides stretch. Coughlin didn’t seem concerned about Bradshaw’s absence because, as he said, “He got in two good days of work prior to this. He’s prepared.”

The Giants, as Coughlin said, listed six players as probable. Aside from Bradshaw, defensive Osi Umenyiora (ankle, knee) and special-teamer/safety Tyler Sash (foot) were limited in practice, while wide receiver Hakeem Nicks (shoulder), cornerback Corey Webster (hamstring) and linebacker Jacquian Williams (foot) practiced fully. All but Bradshaw and Sash appeared to be running and working without limitations Friday for the third straight day on the UIndy campus seven miles south of downtown Indianapolis.

Sash, a sixth-round draft pick from Iowa last April, had his foot stepped on midway through practice and left the field to have the foot wrapped. He told the club’s vice president of communications Pat Hanlon after practice: “I’m okay.”

Coughlin was at his detailed best this week in practice. The Giants were told Lucas Oil Stadium would have an on-field temperature of 68 to 70 degrees Sunday at the 6:29 p.m. kickoff, so Coughlin directed the temperature in the bubble be set at 70 each day. “We were able to get a good sweat going, working in conditions like they’ll have Sunday,’’ the veteran coach said. “Of course, we didn’t have 60,000 people watching.’’ To that end, for the third straight day, the Giants had crowd noise piped into the facility.

“So far this week, we’ve accomplished what we needed to accomplish,’’ Coughlin said. “The players have practiced hard and spirited. I think we’ll be well-prepared for the game.’’

As he has all week, Nicks caught everything thrown his way. And as he has all week, Eli Manning threw the ball crisply and with accuracy in preparation for the game against New England.

Giants players and family members, who arrived Thursday, will be on their own Friday night with a midnight curfew. Curfew will also be enforced Saturday night at the club’s downtown Indianapolis hotel at 11 p.m. The Giants will have a jog-through situational practice Saturday morning, and players will be off during the afternoon. As is the usual custom for a road game, Coughlin will have 75 minutes of night meetings and then evening chapel service and a team snack before curfew Saturday.

The Giants’ full management team was on hand to watch Friday’s workout. Club president and CEO John Mara, who has been present all week, was joined by chairman and executive vice president Steve Tisch and treasurer Jonathan Tisch, and multiple family members of the ownership group were on hand. Also Friday, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, a 2008 Iraq War double-amputee and consistent presence around the team since he gave the team an inspirational speech in 2008, was on the sidelines. Several players, including defensive end Justin Tuck, spent time speaking with Gadson Friday.

New England Patriots practice pool report - Ingles

2012-02-04T10:27:00.002-03:00

Friday, Feb. 3, 2012

By Alex Marvez
Pro Football Writers of America

INDIANAPOLIS -- An hour-long walk-through capped New England's week of indoor Super Bowl XLVI practices Friday at Indianapolis Colts team headquarters.

“This is kind of like Saturday for us,” said Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, referring to the usual light session conducted on the day before a game. “We’ve had a little bit of extra time this week (to practice).

“I think we’re ready to go. We’ve worked hard this week Monday, Wednesday and Thursday in practice, and we had good practices back (in Foxborough, Mass.) last week. We went through some mental-review things out there (Friday).”

Tight end Rob Gronkowski participated in the session, which never saw players run faster than a trot while executing plays. Gronkowski practiced on a limited basis Thursday for the first time since spraining his left ankle January 22 in New England’s AFC Championship game victory over Baltimore.

Dressed in gray sweatpants, gray sneakers and a dark blue t-shirt bearing the popular “Yo Soy Fiesta” phrase he recently coined, Gronkowski moved without a limp when the Patriots executed their offensive plays. He is listed as questionable on New England's injury report for Sunday's matchup against the New York Giants.

"He practiced yesterday. He didn’t do anything today,” Belichick said. “We’ll see where he’s at on Sunday, but hopefully (he’ll play). I saw no setbacks. He’s still making progress.”

Belichick returned to his special-teams roots during the practice. He served as an offensive lineman on punts, trying to draw the punt coverage team offsides by setting his hand on the ground just before the snap. Belichick and Patriots special teams coach Scott O’Brien also worked as defensive linemen when New England’s Stephen Gostkowski was kicking field goals.

“We were just going through the looks,” said Belichick, who coached special teams on three different NFL teams (Detroit, Denver and the Giants) as an assistant during the 1970s and 1980s. “We have key guys based on where they line up. We just try to show them that as a final reminder.”

The Patriots won’t practice Saturday but will have a team photograph taken at Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of Super Bowl XLVI.

“We’ll have meetings and we’ll do some reminders and things like that in our hotel but we’re not going to actually practice,” Belichick said.

New England players do have a Friday night curfew.

“This will be what we normally do if we were on the road Friday night (for a Sunday game),” Belichick said. “We would have curfew.”

Countdown to Super Bowl XLVI – Secret of a Coach’s Success? Ivy League Recruiting Battles - Ingles

2012-02-04T10:20:00.002-03:00

The Giants’ organization is filled with football-savvy people, all of whom seem to agree on one thing: they knew the team’s wide receivers were talented, knew they had potential and knew they could be dangerous this season, but never imagined the receivers would end up with the gaudy statistics they ultimately compiled.

“No,” quarterback Eli Manning said.

“Nope,” General Manager Jerry Reese said.

“Not at all,” the offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride said.

It seems fitting, then, that the most surprising collection of players on the team is led by a position coach whose career path is just as unlikely.

In his most honest moments, the receivers coach Sean Ryan said Tuesday, even he never imagined he would see his charges break out the way they have. But then again, Ryan added, he never imagined he would already be seeking a second Super Bowl title, particularly because it was only six years ago that he was spending much of his time scouring high school scouting reports in search of the rarest of football prospects — the ones with grades good enough to get into Harvard.

“When there is a kid who is good enough that you want and has the grades to get in and you’re fighting for him with Yale? Now that’s challenging,” said Ryan, who came to the Giants in 2007 after serving as an assistant and the recruiting coordinator at Harvard. “The Ivy League doesn’t have all the hoopla of the N.F.L., but that doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.”

He added, “I think a lot of the skills I built there have helped me succeed in my job here.”

In particular, Ryan said, his ability to relate to players — to connect with them on a human level and as a teacher — has been important with the Giants, especially because the team’s three top receivers are all 25 or younger.

“He lets us be ourselves,” Mario Manningham said.

Ryan developed that ability early in his coaching career, he said, but sharpened it during his time in the Ivy League. At Harvard in 2006 and at Columbia as an assistant for the three years before that, he was continually selling a philosophy: come to our college and you’ll be a true student-athlete, Ryan would say. The football is great, and the education is even better.

At one point while at Harvard, Ryan recruited a highly regarded tailback from California, Gino Gordon. Ryan was in contact with Gordon often, tracked everything he had done on the field and off and was determined to take him to Cambridge, Mass.

“But Yale was on him, too,” Ryan said. “And I think Penn was also. I’ll be honest: when we landed him, it was one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve had.”

This season, of course, could top that. Whatever the outcome of the Super Bowl, Ryan — in his second season as the receivers coach and his fifth with the organization — has established himself as an important piece of the Giants’ coaching staff.

Despite losing Steve Smith last summer, the Giants’ receiving corps thrived this season. Hakeem Nicks recorded 1,192 receiving yards and 7 touchdown catches. Manningham caught four scoring passes despite being limited by injury during the regular season, and has pulled in a touchdown pass in each of the Giants’ three postseason victories. And Victor Cruz, who had not recorded a regular-season catch before this season, set a franchise record with 1,536 receiving yards and had 9 touchdowns while introducing a legion of Giants fans to the previously unknown beauty of the end zone salsa dance.

“I don’t do any coaching with the dancing,” Ryan said. “But I did tell him that I might fire up an Irish jig if things go well for him this week.”

That light touch, players said, drives the devotion the receivers feel toward Ryan, who began his Giants tenure as the offensive quality control coach. Ryan has an easy rapport with the receivers. What often happens, Gilbride said, is that the receivers will sit in the larger offensive players meeting, where Gilbride thunders on about mistakes and miscues, before repairing to their own meeting room, where Ryan will deliver the same message in an easier tone.

“I’m always the bad cop,” Gilbride said. “He can go in and soften them a little if I’ve been rough with them.”

Receiver Devin Thomas said that is a skill that should not be undervalued, especially because of the overall inexperience of the group.

“Coach Gilbride, he’s more cut and dried,” Thomas said. “Sean gives it to us on a silver platter. It’s cool for us. It allows us to stay confident.”

That does not mean Ryan cannot be forceful; he hammers the players on their fundamentals, stressing the tiniest of details, like how far bent the receivers’ knees should be at the line of scrimmage so they have the perfect break after the ball is snapped. He is also fanatical about film study, several players said, continually poring over the strengths and weaknesses of his charges.

But on a coaching staff with several intense personalities, Ryan’s light touch with his players distinguishes him. He frequently allows the receivers to take the first five minutes of their position meeting to relax and joke around — a welcome break, players said, as they have typically just come from another 90-minute meeting — and Ryan is not spared when it comes to the ribbing.

“We don’t talk about the Ivy League stuff,” Ramses Barden said. “But we do get on him because he used to play defensive back when he was growing up. I mean, he played D.B.? Come on. What’s he know about wide receivers?”

(source New York Times)