• Four years ago, who ever would’ve thought this would happen?
• New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees • Regarding the Saints’ own fate, along with the more general fate of New Orleans, post-Katrina. The Saints won 31-17, the victors of a symbolic win for a franchise and a city that needed one. It definitely goes a long way to making those awful memories of a damaged Superdome a faded memory. Congrats, scrappy kids of New Orleans. You earned it. source

• It’s official. Nothing can top this Super Bowl classic of an ad. It’s a sequel to the Oprah/Dave ad from a year or two ago, and Leno’s appearance is just the salve needed in a late-night war that had just started to heat up again. We approve. The New York Times has a pretty awesome background on how this happened. source

• $32.4
  million the amount chick flick “Dear John,” which is getting savaged by critics, earned in its debut
• $23.6
  million the amount “Avatar” made in its eighth weekend, which is still pretty solid eight weeks in source

• everything Super Bowl
  
  
• Just the commercials
  
  

• 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

• In honor of Danica Patrick’s killer debut in NASCAR today, here’s the GoDaddy.com ad she was in for the Super Bowl. CBS denied the ad, which is about a football player whose voice gets higher the second he retires. Lola becomes a lingerie maker, which we’re guessing has less to do with the denial (the skin is on Victoria’s Secret level) than the fact that it’s hinted that Lola is gay. CBS has shown clear discomfort with homosexuality in its Super Bowl ads already.

• The “Private Practice” star is literally flipping a coin with her ex-hubby. It sounds completely unbelievable, but Kate Walsh and ex-husband Alex Young have a clause in their settlement that suggests just that. “One-half of the community property furniture and artwork to be divided by alternating picks after the flip of a coin to determine who will pick first,” the settlement agreement reads. Wonder who will get shortchanged. source

• The quote in this article from Sheen is hilarious. This morning, Charlie Sheen’s Mercedes SUV was found driven off a cliff after it was stolen last night. Nobody was found inside. This morning, Sheen made perhaps the best one-liner in his entire career: “It was nice to have police come to my house and for once and I didn’t have to leave with them.” LOL. Pitch perfect. source

• This commercial probably cost 10¢ to make, but we bet the dividends could be huge if Leno takes some of that money he’s been storing away from “The Tonight Show” to bring this burger joint to Burbank. In fact, he should just stop doing “The Tonight Show” altogether and work there as a manager, since he likes working so much. Nobody would miss his show. source