• I know many of you think I am over-estimating her and under-estimating the common sense of the American people. I hope to God you’re right.
• Super-blogger Andrew Sullivan • Regarding the Tea Party convention. For some reason, Sullivan thought it was a great idea to live-blog her performance last night. Don’t get him wrong; he doesn’t like Palin, either, but he realizes her importance. Begrudgingly. source

• The Super Bowl is an American phenomenon. Despite its completely unavoidable presence in the U.S., Super Bowl Sunday is pretty much a nonentity outside of North America, where soccer is king. Even so, it’s still a much bigger moneymaker than any other single sporting event. Here’s a breakdown of how this works out.

Not-so-super viewership

• 106
  million people watched all of last year’s Super Bowl telecast, almost entirely in the U.S. and Canada
• 109
  million people watched all of last year’s UEFA Champions League final, a hugely popular soccer match

Super brand value

• $420M the Super Bowl’s value as an brand, making it the largest brand of all
• $230M the Olympics’ value, despite the fact it’s a much larger event
• $120M the World Cup’s value; it routinely tops the Super Bowl in total viewers

Super ad rates

• $312 million in Anheuser-Busch ads alone since 1990

• $3
  million the amount NBC charged for 69 ad spots last year
• $2.8
  million the amount CBS is able to charge per ad this year source

• Big game, big profits. Despite the fact that it’s just a single game, it often can top the advertising value of both the the World Series and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, which each take place over multiple games.

So why isn’t it spreading?

• complication American football is a much more complicated sport than soccer and basketball, which both have easily and quickly spread into China, for example. Blame the penalties.
• mediocrity The NFL had been trying to tap the European market for years with a secondary league which folded in 2007. Now the NFL has real games in Europe, a better strategy. source

• This is kind of awesome. Comparing stock trends with pop hits (complete with links to YouTube videos for each song) is pretty brilliant. In case you’re wondering, the songs are chosen not by their popularity, but by their beat variance. They represent the average. Which is why Erasure’s 1994 hit “Always” got picked over Bon Jovi’s 1994 hit “Always.” source

• 1978 last time New Orleans had a white mayor (Mitch Landrieu won the race last night) source
• never last time New Orleans had a team in the Super Bowl (the Saints play the Colts later today) source

• So, why do we launch space shuttles out of Florida, anyway? NASA’s Shuttle program may be coming to a close in the near future, but while they’re still happening, they’re keeping up a common trend – a delayed launch. With just 40% of launches happening on time, it’s more common for a ship to be delayed by weather than not. And Florida kinda has a lot of it. Anyway, the Endeavor was delayed again this morning. By what, you say? Clouds. source

• Palin, while explicitly saying the movement had no leader, implicitly offered herself up as one. After this speech, which was widely covered on the internet and carried on television, the tea party movement and Sarah Palin will be inextricably intertwined.
• Nashville Post conservative critic A.C. Kleinheider • Regarding this weekend’s Tea Party convention, which he says hurt the movement by giving it a de facto leader in the form of Sarah Palin. He was particularly annoyed that her speech invoked Ronald Reagan, who, among other things, was a huge spender while in office. It kinda goes against the message the Tea Party is trying for, he argues. Ultimately, that’s probably what’s going to happen to the movement – people who don’t understand that it’s against big government are going to try to co-opt it as a movement for Republican ideals. While we’re not exactly in favor of what the Tea Party is pitching, we definitely think there’s a lot of missing-the-point going on. source

• 17.8″ snowfall total at Reagan National Airport, just outside of D.C. – the airport’s second-highest-ever total
• 24.8″ snowfall total at Baltimore Washington International Airport, its highest total ever in a two-day span
• 28.5″ snowfall total in Philadelphia, the second-highest total ever in the region; start shoveling source

• Is more coming? Because Mother Nature hates us personally and wants ShortFormBlog to apparently shut down, she plans on bringing more snow to the Mid-Atlantic region later this week. This time it’s only reportedly going to be six inches, but come on, what did we do to you, Mom?