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Janet makes end zone celebrations in NFL seem minor

Well, Paul Tagliabue did warn that the National Football League is far too august to allow players to brandish cellphones or other such pranks.

Meanwhile, eyes wide open, the NFL signed on with MTV and Michael Jackson's little sister, and got exactly what it deserved -- the wrong kind of attention.

The sad part for the NFL is that this was one of the best Super Bowls, full of comebacks and strategy, athletic feats and suspense. On Monday, all over America, people might have been debating the value of squib kickoffs and 2-point conversion attempts.

Instead, the country is talking about whether the material on Janet Jackson's costume came off by accident, or was some kind of crass made-for-video shtick. Right about now, the commish must be wishing for Terrell Owens and the soft marker he hid in his sock.

In the past, the Super Bowl had so many laughers and yawners that fans sat in their living rooms and sagely told each other, "The commercials are the best part." Willingly, and for money, the Super Bowl long ago became bloated with original commercials plus a halftime spectacle designed to appeal to people who hate football.

Since then, the game itself has matured in some cosmic fashion to the point where coaches coach and players play in some approximation of regular-season physicality and testiness and execution.

Men dove into the end zone with abandon. Linebackers hacked the throwing arm of quarterbacks. There was the same enlightened brutishness that makes even the normal local-market-only games between also-rans so compelling.

Sunday night was for the championship of this vast and powerful league, and it was worthy of such high stakes. Adam Vinatieri missed a field goal. Ricky Proehl caught a desperate touchdown pass for the second time in three years. A linebacker caught a touchdown pass. Both quarterbacks improved as the game went on. And Vinatieri won the Super Bowl with a field goal in the final seconds.

These are the things worth remembering about that game. Instead, people are talking about a helter-skelter halftime show that hardly seemed worth all the fuss. In the serenity of my own home, I did what halftimes were created for -- I went to the loo -- and promptly missed all the excitement. Now it is a certifiable big deal.

We'll leave it to the Federal Communications Commission and the networks and the league and all the heavies to sort out the incident. In publishing, there is a kind of novel known as a bodice-ripper. Now the Super Bowl has had its own bodice-ripper, courtesy of the same MTV folks who, for decades, have been delivering murky, seedy musical dramas to further confuse and manipulate young people.

But what about the commercials? If this is the biggest single sports event in America, what do the commercials say about the wedding of sports and commerce?

The commissioner decrees an end to silly stunts that downgrade sportsmanship. So the player scoring the touchdown demurely hands the ball to the referee -- and then we cut away to a couple of minutes of commercials. Under the heading of "The Claptrap of the American Mind," I took some notes during this very good game Sunday night: "Bears buy beer. Movie about monsters. Sprained neck from motorcycle stunt. Movie: woman beats up man. Beer ad: coach and wife berate a ref. Cars crash on highway in test stunt. Flatulent horse. Dog bites man in crotch."
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