Super Bowl 42 turned out to be one the most exciting championship games of recent times. The New York Giants came up with a major upset and defeated the New England Patriots 17 – 14. The game itself was unexpectedly close and low scoring; a very old school defensive battle. The Giants defense did a fantastic job disrupting Tom Brady and the Patriots offense.

I am sure the 1972 Miami Dolphins are sleeping more peacefully now knowing that they are still the last undefeated team. It is hard to believe that the Pats went 18-0, and lost the very last one that counted the most. It shows that going undefeated in the NFL is not such an easy task.

Best play of the game: Less than a minute to go in the fourth quarter, Eli Manning miraculously breaks free from what looks like a definite sack, and connects a 32 yard pass to David Tyree, who also makes an incredible play and catches the ball over his head and between two defenders. Giants score the winning touchdown a few plays later.

Most controversial play: Patriots coach Bill Belichick decides to go for it on a 4th and 13 instead of attempting a 49 yard field goal. The Pats obviously did not make the first down and coincidentally ended up losing by a field goal.

Overall grade of Super Bowl 42 (the actual game): A+

A lot of viewers tune into the Super Bowl, not for the game, but for everything around the game; the half-time show and commercials particularly. Let’s talk first about the half-time show which was performed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The performance was good, nothing spectacular though, and was what you would expect from a half-time show. Any show without a wardrobe malfunction is probably considered a success.

Overall grade for the Super Bowl half-time show: B

Where the game and the half-time show were fun to watch, the commercials on the other hand were horrible. There were maybe a handful of commercials that were somewhat decent, while the rest of them were painful to watch. I thought that as the game went on, the commercials would get better, but that totally did not happen. The average cost for a 30 second spot was $2.7 million. Talk about throwing money down the drain. Out of the handful that were decent, two of them were actually pretty good. Both of these commercials were from E-trade and had a talking baby. Most people may think a talking baby is not that creative and played out, but for some reason, it seemed to be a winning combination (especially when compared to the other commercials). Out of the many bad commercials, the worst ones were definitely the Sales Genie commercials. These were the cartoon type commercials which pictured an Indian guy in one and Chinese pandas in the other. Some people may even consider these border-line offensive. You can decide for yourself below.

Overall grade for the Super Bowl commercials: C

Etrade – Commercial 1

Etrade – Commercial 2

Sales Genie – Commercial 1

Sales Genie – Commercial 2

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