What sets the Super Bowl apart from other big games is the pregame show, "which has no parallel," and this year CBS aimed to capture the essence of host city Las Vegas ahead of the Big Game, according to Cathal Kelly of the GLOBE & MAIL. It is not the amount of content that makes it special, "though that’s part of it" -- it's "the tone." Kelly noted everything in the show “should be produced within an inch of its life.” The Super Bowl pregame show is “ripe, government cheese.” It is “100-per-cent saturated fats” and an “entire segment on Carrot Top and his Las Vegas journey.” Kelly: “It is CBS doing a solid for its partners at Paramount by bringing on its European Champions League broadcast crew to play a game of ‘Whose soccer clichés are stupider?’ with their American counterparts.” It is a “10-minute, mini-feature film about Al Davis saving the NFL.” Davis, an “egomaniacal wing-nut who tried his best to run the Raiders franchise into the ground, did nothing of the sort.” But truth “doesn’t often make great TV” (GLOBE & MAIL, 12/11).
HOF QUEST: In Chicago, Jeff Agrest reported ESPN’s “Postseason NFL Countdown” yesterday aired a 10-minute segment on former NFLer Steve McMichael and his “quest for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame while battling ALS.” ESPN’s Sam Borden reported and voiced the segment, which “examines McMichael’s career with the Bears, shows his transformation into a wrestler and explains when Misty first noticed the onset of ALS.” Afterward, studio host Sam Ponder and Pro Football HOFer Randy Moss “appeared emotional,” and former coach Rex Ryan, whose father, Buddy, coached McMichael, “fought back tears” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 2/11).
NO SHOW: President Joe Biden's re-election campaign co-Chair Mitch Landrieu yesterday said that the president “made the ‘right choice’ in skipping an interview with CBS News ahead of the Super Bowl.” Landrieu: “People really want to watch a Super Bowl tonight and think about football. They don’t want to hear from a politician.” THE HILL’s Lauren Sforza noted the network “confirmed earlier this month” that Biden would not be sitting down for an interview with CBS News before the Super Bowl. Biden did not sit down with Fox News ahead of the big game last year after he “previously gave interviews to the network broadcasting the game, NBC and CBS, in each of his first two years in office” (THE HILL, 2/11).
