The Carolina Panthers have what I believe is the best quarterback in the NFL. Denver has the best defense, but they haven’t seen a QB like Cam Newton. Peyton Manning looks like he’s on his last legs. The Vegas point-spread oscilates between 5 and 6 points. No matter. I think the Carolina Panthers will win this Super Bowl easily and beat the spread. Who do you think will win? And who picked Coldplay for the Half-time band? At least Beyonce will make a cameo appearance.
Carolina Panthers in a blowout!
That halftime show is completely schizophrenic: First Coldplay, then they added Beyoncé, and now they’ve added Bruno Mars. It’s like they’re trying to appeal to all demographics and pleasing none.
And now to the kitchen to start the prep work for my Buffalo Chicken Dip. Yum!
Deb, that BUFFALO CHICKEN DIP sounds great! We’ll be on a plane from St. Augustine, FL to Baltimore and then after a short lay-over, we’ll be flying back to Buffalo in time for the Super Bowl kick-off.
1. I am totally with you on the Panthers and Peyton. Time to retire! I think the Panthers’ defense will make him look even worse than he has all season.
2. I never, ever watch the halftime show. Coldplay? Ick. Will Gwynnie be there?
Jeff, some people wonder why Coldplay was chosen as the Half-time “entertainment.” I know that answer. What group has sold the most albums in the 21st Century? Answer: Coldplay (80 million). Deb’s right about the Politically Correct addition of Beyonce and Bruno Mars.
Well, I’ll admit it’s marginally better than the NBA All-Star game where the half-time show will star…Sting! Try to get your head around that one!
Deb, if I were on the Super Bowl Half-time committee I’d go with Taylor Swift or Adele.
I agree with your pick, George, but Gary Kubiak and Wade Phillips are my sentimental favorites.
Bill, Wade was Head Coach for the Bills the last time they made the Playoffs…16 years ago. We’re fond of Wade, too!
we loved wade when he was in SD
Not too much OT:
One of my favourite US sites snopes debunks myths about the Superbowl:
http://www.snopes.com/2016/02/06/top-7-super-bowl-myths-and-legends/
Though I’m not a sports fan at all, I wish you all a happy viewing – and may the better team win!
I have my usual bet down, and as usual got great odds & a generous point spread.
Dan, a bet a colleague a pizza that Carolina would beat the spread.
I totally agree about Cam and Peyton. apparently Cam angers people by excessive celebration, but I’ve never noticed it. Our paper had an article about what a threat he is.
I watched the show from Fri. about the best superbowl half time shows, and remember last time it was in SD how horrible the show was. It was interesting, showed the thought that went into U2’s performance in 2002 and the 9-11 tribute. It also showed how Bruno Mars made all the doubters at his being picked believe. They also showed the process of who they chose after the janet jackson/timberlake debacle, and how they could have gone back to Up With People type shows again.
I’m at a loss to figure out coldplay, but as long as they don’t EVER show gwenyth paltrow, I’ll probably enjoy it. I’ve just noticed how sporadic i use capitalization.
Maggie, I wonder how many people even watch the Half-time show. Katy Perry put on a good one last Super Bowl.
I just want it to be OVER. And, like that other cool dude Meyerson, I NEVER watch the halftime. They’d have to book Martha Argerich to get my attention, and that’s less likely than a halftime asteroid strike.
Art, there have been some disastrous Half-time shows at the Super Bowl. Who can forget Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”!
Me three! I don’t watch the halftime show! If the hated Geldings get ahead I won’t watch the game, either!
Bob, I think Cam and the Panthers have this one in the bag.
Wow, everyone here seems to have a hate-on for Coldplay, whom I like (at least the early albums, a couple of which I have and enjoy). I usually don’t watch the halftime show. Today it’s absolutely gorgeous here, about 60, sunny, I’ll be outside grilling steaks during halftime. Barbara likes to watch the shows, see who does what. The halftime show I’d watch would be the same one Art suggests, or perhaps a symphony orchestra doing the music of John Williams or Howard Shore. Or if, like old times, they had marching bands and such.
The game: for the first time in a long time, I really don’t much care who wins. I’d kinda like to see on last blast for the Broncos, but I’d like to see some new blood come to the fore in the AFC next year. Carolina is favored and will probably win, but they seem a little too full of themselves for my taste. I have not watched a single minutes of coverage/hype over the last two weeks, for which I’m glad. But then I’ve been ill so it was easy to do.
Safe flights, George.
The superbowl halftime show on fri night had the first superbowl with bands from Grambling and Ariz. all black and all white, and they opined that it was probably done to ease race relations. I’ve heard that the addition of Beyonce and Mars was done perhaps to counteract the oscars snow white acting categories. Beyonce’s 1/2 time show was probably one of my favorite and Mars surprised me very favorably.
Maggie, having Coldplay, Beyonce, and Bruno Mars seems a too much for a Half-time show.
Rick, we just landed in Buffalo at 5 P.M. Within a half hour we were home and unpacking. Just in time for the Super Bowl kick-off!
Oh, and in reply to Art’s initial comment, “I just want it to be OVER.” What I want to be over is the damn election, and there are still eight and three-quarter months of debates, mud-slinging, nauseating advertisements, cut shots of Trumps red, stupid face, and all the rest. Gaaaah! (runs screaming from the room)
Amen to that, Rick.
I like your halftime idea better.
It has turned much colder for Florida – went from several days of 80-82 to 53 this morning (a high of 63 is predicted) with a stiff wind from the north, and it is supposed to be 10 degrees colder by tomorrow morning. Definitely sweater or jacket weather, rather than shorts.
Jeff, almost all the people in St. Augustine were wearing gloves and parkas. The temperature was in the 40s and you would think the world was coming to an end! Those folks really can’t deal with the “cold.” I felt comfortable.
Rick, as they say in the movie CONCUSSION: “The NFL owns one day of the week.”
Reading this is real fun for me since I’m not a sports person either.
Now for something totally OT (or not?):
Almost ten years ago there was the soccer world championship 2006 – in Germany …
When the German team unexpectedly showed really good results, (almost …) everybody went crazy – in my favourite bar a big screen was installed, everybody had nothing to talk about but soccer. So I looked for cheap last minute holidays on the internet to GAFIA (get away from it all) – my first wife had died two years ago and I was alone.
And I found a really cheap offer: A flight from the soccer capital Düsseldorf to Ft Myers and a nice motel in Ft Myers Beach – seemed that nobody wanted to fly in those days at the end of June …
So I said good bye, took the train the day before, had a nice evening in a bar (Düsseldorf is famous for that) and the next day I flew to Florida, rented a car and enjoyed the beach, the Everglades, Key West …
Even got to see the fireworks on July fourth!
That was one of my best holidays ever!
PS:
Hope you enjoyed the story …
Wolf, billions of dollars will be bet on the Super Bowl. That’s the dark side of the game’s popularity.
nice story I like your off topics
George–we used to go camping in the St. Augustine area when I was in my early teens (early 1970s). We’d tour the old fort and go to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. We’d get up super early the next day and drive to Disney World. It was the E-ticket days. Ah, memories.
As for the game, it’s not going at all the way I thought it would. I never dreamed the Broncos would be ahead at halftime.
Deb, we drove by the RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT MUSEUM. And we visited a lot of shops. I thought Cam Newton would have a Big Game. Instead, he morphed into a turnover machine.
deb cleaning out my desk, I found some e tickets
I’m surprised you had any left…those were always the best rides! At the end of the day, my siblings and I would always still have A-through-D tickets left, but nary an E-ticket. Sometimes, we’d even beg my Dad to buy extras, but my Dad would just tell us to use an A-ticket and go ride “If Man Had Wings” for the umpteenth time!
/Kids today can never understand the hardship of not having enough E-tickets!
4th quarter… Carolina does seem to have this one in the bag after all. Still a two possession games with 13 left. We’ll see. Carolina just recovered a fumble on the 50.
Steaks were good, I read a short story at half time, Barbara’s favorite commercial is the weiner dogs running to catsup. I went to the library second quarter, deserted. Picked up a couple of holds.
Rick, I liked the DORITOS Ultra-sound commercial. And the NFL babies commercial.
i think the car commercials took top for me. I can’t believe there was no clydesdale commercial!! Kevin Hart’s commercial and the prius bank robbers (both of them) were my top, and I liked the weiner dogs one as well also the doritos one with dogs and the ultra sound.
Maggie, that Prius bank robbers commercial was innovative.
that was supposed to be “does NOT” seem to…….
Over. Good for Denver.
Crappiest Superbowl in history! I don’t know who those bozos in the Carolina uniforms were, but they weren’t the Panthers! And, as usual, the officials helped Denver out with a plethora of bad calls or non-calls! PFUI!!!
Bob, it was a dull Super Bowl. Cam Newton was a huge disappointment. Way too many turnovers.
I think the first bad call, and bad review on Rivera’s first challenge, may have set the tone for the game. I think the Panthers momentum was destroyed at least a bit. Newton didn’t seem himself, though much of that can be “credited” to some great Bronco’s moves. Sigh.
I wonder if there will be a 3rd Prius commercial showing the robbers being captured?
Maggie, Cam Newton stormed out of the post-game news conference. The Prius bank robber may have launched a serial commercial!
One last comment: was I the only one who noticed Manning’s references to “drinking lots of Budweiser/lots of beer” in his post-game interviews? He made that statement at least twice that I heard. They seemed weirdly out-of-place and I couldn’t help but think that Budweiser had driven a truck-load of cash to Manning’s house to get those plugs.
I’m seeing on the interwebs that I’m not the only one who found that Budweiser reference somewhat suspicious. Budweiser tweeted that they didn’t know it was coming, but other comments claim that the shout-outs were worth over $3 million and there’s no way Manning wasn’t paid to make those comments.
I noticed it, and just figured he was getting tons of $ for it. Conan joked about his ads at the sat NFL honor show, but I can’t remember what he ref’d as being the only one Peyton didn’t do ads for. I wanted a clydesdale ad!!!
I think he’s also part owner or franchise owner of Papa John’s, hence those commercials.
Bud was one of the major sponsors of the game, so I think that’s why, but it surprised me, too, especially when he said it the second time on the award podium.certainly he was paid for the reference, but it just doesn’t seem like him, unless the “pay” was a major grant to his charity or some such.
Rick, I’m guessing you zip thru ads on TV, otherwise you’d know Peyton does ads for sooo many things, and has over the years. They are mostly entertaining, at least for the first time or 2. I zip thru ads, but will always watch the suburu dogs commercials, and movie ads (once or twice). I think it’s despicable that ads take up nearly 1/3 of tv programs
My husband notes that it is perhaps unsurprising for us to learn that Manning is part-owner of several Annheuser-Busch distributorships.
Deb, your husband is correct. Manning owns a “piece” of the Annheuser-Busch pie.
And I thought the superbowl was about sports …
This discussion reminds me of our last holiday in the USA.
Alamo/National didn’t have a small car at the Nashville airport (we started our holiday by visiting my wife’s nephew who is a prof at Vanderbilt) and I didn’t want a SUV so after a lot of haggling we settled on a Prius (I paid 10$ extra per day but the guy said I’d use less gas …).
We did take that car down the coast via the Smokey Mountains, Charleston and Savannah to St Augustine and of course the Space Center – for my wife it was the first time and she’s also a SF fan, so looking at the Shuttle and the moon rocket was like heaven for her …
But we absolutely refused to drink any Bud!
Wolf, most American beers taste like colored water. But the billions spent in marketing convince people to drink it. Of course, if you’re ever in Flint, Michigan you might choose to drink Bud rather than the water.
George, no thanks!
If no craft beer were available I’d settle for a Coors – but no Bud!
Of course we in Europe have the original Budweiser Pils – that’s completely different and very nice.
Btw the remarks of the other commentators showed me that it’s really just for the money – what a pity!
So for me: No sports!
Another totally OT story unless you consider drinking beer as some kind of sport:
As I wrote, on our last visit to the USA we went along the southern East Coast. It’s an old habit of mine to visit a bar in every town and my wife agrees with it – you often see and sometimes talk to interesting people.
So in Savannah at the waterfront we went into a bar and soon two men (in their early forties maybe) sitting besides us realised that we spoke German – so a conversation was started, of course also about beer …
It turned out that they were fire inspectors for the Air Force and going on a trip in late summer to inspect several European air bases, among them Munich. Their boss had told them:
But you can’t go to Munich in October – you’d surely be just hanging round the Oktoberfest, no way!
So they told us with a grin they were going in late September and we immediately started laughing with them – why?
Because the Oktoberfest is held in late September – it always ends on the first Sunday in October.
Now if their boss had known that …
Wolf, great story about Oktoberfest!