How To Sort of Pretend You Care About The Super Bowl This Year

It's February, which means that everyone must once again gather around to watch the Super Bowl so that we can all talk about it the following day. "How about when Velocity McFast scored that touchdown by doing The Worm??" people will burble. "Have you ever seen a wide receiver legally change his name to Velocity McFast in mid-play, and then change it back during halftime?" they will continue. "Does this look infected to you?" someone else will ask, pointing his bare stomach, because he does not understand the objective of this conversation.

To not be that person, it is your duty as an American, and possibly as a Canadian, to watch this overblown media event and laugh woodenly at its terrible commercials. Here is a brief guide to this year's Super Bowl to help you along.

New Rule Changes

• The league has instituted new guidelines to protect helpless players, rendering it unlikely that anybody will run over and sack backup quarterback David Carr as he sits quietly on the bench.
• Every scoring play now gets an automatic video review, meaning that Tom Coughlin can no longer distract the referees by doing a silly dance while his team nudges the ball into the end zone and claims a touchdown has already occurred.
• It is now NFL procedure for all kickoffs to sail over the end zone and bounce pointlessly onto the freeway.
• New overtime rules may make their first Super Bowl appearance this year; these are designed to provide both teams to have the ball at least once, ensuring that fans get to see a genuine contest. Unless, of course, you are a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, in which case the other team will score an 80-yard touchdown on the first play of overtime and you will run out of the house and fall to your knees, screaming "Noooooo!" up into the pouring rain.

Super Bowl XLVI Notes

• Experts generally agree that New England has the edge in total offense, total quarterback smugness, and total quarterback wife attractiveness. The Patriots also arrived in Indianapolis first, so only Bill Belichick knows which parts of the field he has seeded with land mines.
• Eli Manning is playing in the very city where his older brother usually quarterbacks, but Peyton spent this season injured; expect frequent shots of Peyton sitting in the stands, Peyton smacking Eli in the back of the head and pretending it was somebody else, and Peyton poking his finger in Eli's face and going "I'm not touching you, you can't get mad!" For the record, there is a third Manning brother, but he is a plumber or something and nobody cares about him.
• This halftime show will feature Madonna, who may seem like an odd choice, until you consider that before the last Super Bowl, the previous acts were 61, 62, and 67 years old. Just be glad the NFL didn't summon an ancient ghost to sing "My Humps." Rumors indicate that Madonna will do something shocking, e.g. juggling live babies from atop a unicycle and periodically taking a bite out of one until all the babies are gone.

Super Bowl XLVI Predictions

• A Madden NFL 12 prediction picked the Giants by a field goal; meanwhile a famous camel in New Jersey picked the Giants by eating a cracker that had "The Giants" written on it. Both the video game and the camel are substantially more accurate than professional analysts.
• For our part, we predict that at the last possible second, an embattled Eli Manning will slip on a banana peel and fling the ball wildly into the air, where it will rebound off a passing goose, carom off a Patriot's helmet, and sail into the waiting arms of Hakeem Nicks, whose graceful catch will mean the Giants lose by 15 instead of 21.
• A wounded Darth Vader will stop Bill Belichick from shooting lightning at Eli Manning by picking him up and hurling him into the Death Star's power core. "Aaaahh!" Belichick will wail, exploding in a burst of villainy.

Will you watch the Super Bowl?