On Super Bowl Sunday, about fifty Americans will actually sit in front of their televisions and watch the commercials that advertisers paid $2.8 million per thirty second slot to purchase. The rest spend that valuable time moving their bowels.

Which is fine, because it gives us an excuse to present our yearly Super Bowl advertising roundup, a look at who won big and who fumbled their chance in the high-stakes Super Bowl ad game. Think of it as a belated play-by-play to a competition that has less relevance than a priest in Hell.

In general, most of this year's big ads seemed to fall flat, with few exciting or interesting standouts. There was also a propensity of just plain weird advertising. As usual, though, the biggest impacts were made by those ads that simply went for the comedy route. When will the ad men learn that most viewers don't want pseudo-intellectual bullshit from their commercials? A chuckle and a smile will suffice.

THE RON POPEILL MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BEST SUPER BOWL AD

Two normal guys and their normal family, Computer.Com
Before Super Sunday, ad experts previewed the big day as Dot Com Fest, with all the latest web ventures ponying up the big bucks for their shot at a Super Bowl audience. That turned out to be the case, and as the pundits predicted, all the Dot Coms got blurred and muddled together in an unrecognizable mess.

Only one stood out, and that was because they focused on what makes the Dot Com business revolution so remarkable: the amazing opportunities available to a couple of guys in their basement with a computer. Computer.Com felt like a homemade ad, with the two owners of the company pitching their service--a website that tells consumers about the computers they can buy-- to the camera in a normal and unassuming way. They also cut to members of the owners' families to talk about the company, most of them playing into the clueless stereotype of most consumers when it comes to Dot Com companies.

Though I'm sure it was cleverly engineered, it felt real, and focusing the ad's theme on the uniqueness of the Dot Com landscape made this ad stand out from the pack. No CG special effects, no talking dog puppets, no "WASSSAAAAP?" Just good clever writing that sells a product well.

THE PROGRESSIVE AUTO INSURANCE MEMORIAL AWARD FOR WORST SUPER BOWL AD

A fake miracle, Nuveen
It's astounding to consider what could have inspired Nuveen to depict a walking Christopher Reeve with the help of computer trickery to emphasize the impact that progress will have on our future lifestyle. It's equally astounding to try and fathom what would have possessed Reeve to want to participate. Does he need the cash? Is he that hungry to remain in the public eye? Couldn't he have realized how squirmy this commercial would make people feel? It's an abberation on the level of resurrecting Fred Astaire to waltz with a Dustbuster in an effort to sell vacuum cleaners. Maybe Nuveen should get to work trying to help people like Reeve walk again instead of blowing over two million dollars to show us oogie CG images of him doing it.

SOME OTHER MEMORABLE MOMENTS

Sprinting grandma, Tropicana orange juice
The sight of a white-haired elderly woman sprinting down a city block and flipping over cars made for some big laughs and fit the message well: drink more Tropicana orange juice. If that's what it can do, I'll be chugging a few glasses a day until I die, fer shure.

Everybody eat THIS, Gap, Oldsmobile It's about time someone skewered the eerie "Everybody..." Gap ads with the blank-stare singers. This Oldsmobile commercial featured a group of antiseptic twentysomethings singing along to Gary Numan's "Cars" while their clothes switched around from white to grey to tops and khakis. It identially parodied the Gap ads. Then an Oldsmobile car came screeching out and scared all the singers away. The only way to improve the ad would have been for the car to mow down a few of the singers in the process--those Gap bastards deserve nothing less.

Emoting dog, Budweiser
A really clever mini-story commercial about an actor dog who has to summon up emotion for a big crying scene in a western. So he thinks about the time when he was chasing a Budweiser truck and slammed head-first into a van. Classic Budweiser stuff: setup, delivery. Bada-bing. In and out. Also, it's further proof that a good laugh can go a lot further than flashy setup with no payoff.

Overcrowding schools, U.S. Census
Good ad. Made the point. Bonus star. Nothing more to say.

The Regis fantasy sequence, ABC
This series of ads featured a nice build-up and payoff, with some nice laughs from Regis Philbin appearing in a series of Tuesday night ABC shows. I know he's not the most popular man in some circles, but for me Reeg will always be an underrated genius. He's such an idiosyncratic performer, and his best work has always come from taking every opportunity to reinforce those idiosyncrosies, like the mild egotism that would inspire him to dream about appearing on every ABC show imaginable. Beside that, it was just damn funny to see Reeg slap some guy around on the NYPD Blue set.

Man vs. cheetah, Mountain Dew
So few ads went the adrenaline-pumping route this year, which is a bad call, since the football audience would seem to be particularly ready to devote their attention to faux-action scenes in ads. This Mountain Dew spot played up the adrenaline nicely with a race between a biker and a cheetah through the desert. Finally the biker leaps from his bike and tackles the cheetah before reaching his arm down the cheetah's throat to procure a stolen can of Dew. That jarring ending--watching this guy stick his arm into a cheetah way past the elbow--definitely made for a big impact.

Designated Gretsky, Budweiser
Another great Bud spot, this one against drunk driving, found a smart angle from which to approach the issue of designated driving. Wayne Gretzky offers a friend a ride home after a night of boozing it up and gives him a lift on his zamboni. A really solid laugh made for some great impact with this ad, with a rare use of humor to address a usually heavy-handed, serious issue.

Singing for your supper, Pets.Com
That wacky dog puppet always makes me laugh like a drain. Always. Hi-LARIOUS.