First, there was this Snickers ad aired during the Super Bowl, in which Betty and fellow octogenarian actor Abe Vigoda play some pick-up football with much younger men.
According to the USA Today Ad Meter, which measures viewer reactions to TV spots, the Snickers ad was the highest-ranking among all the big game's commercials.
Far from being a one-off return to the spotlight, the Super Bowl spot seems to have touched off a groundswell of support among the social media savvy to have Betty White stick around for a while. A Facebook fan page set up at the end of 2009 as a petition to the Saturday Night Live producers to consider giving Betty White a shot at hosting the show has taken off in recent weeks. An article released today by social media news site Mashable noted that the page had hit 342,000 fans this morning; at last check this afternoon, 352,000 fans had joined.
Rose from St. Olaf has always been edgy. SNL, on the other hand, has not. Count me among those who think that maybe Betty White is just the host needed to inject a little life back into the show.
Okay, here's the thing about the Super Bowl. Not many people remember, but it used to be a football game. In fact, way back it was "the football game." That's because the National Footbal League had been the only league for sometime and then the American Football League started up...for Canadians think about the World Hockey League competing with the NHL. But the difference is, the American Football League signed a lot of hot young College players for big bucks and after a shaky start did sell some tickets. However, it was still considered second rate football and the cry from fans was, "Yeah, but the AFC League Champs wouldn't stand a chance against the National League Champs." Well, you know what happened. All the football clubs smelled money and so the "Super Bowl"...the ultimate championship game was born. Cool. But, as predicted, in the first two years the National League Champs walked all over the American League Champs and it was a bit of a joke. Then came Super Bowl Three. Actually it's the first game that was called Super Bowl...the previous two were just named NFL-AFL Championship. The year was 1969 and to build the flagging hype for the game, the AFC Champion, New York Jets quarterback, Joe Namath, guaranteed the New York fans victory. This drew a lot of press because the NFL Champion Baltimore Colts were a powerhouse. Moreover, Broadway Joe Namath, as he was known, was later to brag of having sex the night before the game. At the time, many coaches in all sports demanded their athletes refrain from sex before a game as it was thought that would drain the competitive spirit. But I digress. Back to 1969 and to everyone's shock (especially Las Vegas) the Jets triumphed over the Colts and an era of true, "Super Bowls" began. Except that each successive year the hype became greater, the media coverage more in-depth and the commercialization more...more...well...commercialized. In 1984, Apple actually bet every nickel they had on one commercial to be shown on the Super Bowl and built their entire computer company from that...or so the story goes. Well today, the commercials have so bastardized the game that the game isn't really football as us oldtimers knew it. There are so many commercial breaks that for the pre-senile, you forget what you're watching. All of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of a football game but you forget who's playing or what the score is or why you've got all that beer and nachos in front of you. What's worse, it changes the complexion of the game entirely. It used to be that the game moved fast and fatigue was a factor. If a quarterback sensed that a defender was getting tired he'd run more plays at that defender and then bring in someone fresh off the bench for the next play to out run them. Now, there are so many commercial breaks with the players standing around chatting with each other that it's impossible for any one to even work up a sweat. Not really the same game at all. And, of course, the TV stations all send out press releases saying that people actually tune in for the commercials more than the football. Perhaps, but here's the killer. If a company does a really great commercial, something like the Betty White commercial shown here, why would they spend all those millions to show it on a football game when all they have to do is post it on YouTube and then send it around the world via e-mail and blogs such as this one? They'll get more eyeballs and it costs them nothing.
Millionaire football players, high-salaried TV Executives, agents, unions, et al, enjoy it while you can. The commercialization will eventually kill the game and new media will make buying time during Super Bowl unnecessary. Then maybe football can go back to what it was...a great game of strategy, strength and endurance best enjoyed with friends at a local school yard just behind your apartment building.