Column: The hyping of Super Bowl commercials upstages the hyping of the game itself

The rush for the title of best Super Bowl commercial already has begun, and early signs point to a banner year for banality, middle-aged TV celebrities and, of course, animals doing wacky things.

Forget Patrick Mahomes versus Jalen Hurts.

According to Vulture.com, a website I always turn to for the latest pop culture news until I’ve reached my limit of free articles, informs us that on Super Bowl Sunday, “the game is the pee break.”

That’s a shame considering the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles is about as good as it gets, football-wise. It’s the proverbial game that needs no hype.

But that’s irrelevant to many of the 200 million or so people expected to tune in Feb. 12, so the hyping of the commercials has become more important than who wins the game.

According to reliable experts who easily can be Googled, the obsession with commercials began in 1984 when Apple introduced its Macintosh computer with a Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott that alluded to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

The tagline, dramatically displayed after a woman athlete hurls a sledgehammer into a video screen of Big Brother, read: “On Jan. 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh, and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’ ”

It was an instant classic, unlike Super Bowl XVIII, in which the Los Angeles Raiders trounced the Washington Redskins in a snoozefest.

Thirty-nine years later, we’re actually living in a world that somewhat resembles “1984,” with a Chinese spy balloon flying over Montana and a megalomaniac controlling who is allowed to have their thoughts displayed on Twitter. An updated Apple Super Bowl commercial with someone tossing a hammer at a big screen featuring Elon Musk might be warranted.

Naturally, many of the new commercials will go viral before the game next week thanks to Twitter, TikTok and YouTube, and several already have been teased ad nauseam.

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Alicia Silverstone returns in her role as Cher from “Clueless” for a Rakuten ad, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl shills for Crown Royal, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul bring back their iconic “Breaking Bad” characters for PopCorners, Tony Romo does a bad Bill Murray impression as Carl the “Caddyshack” groundskeeper in a Michelob Ultra spot, Ozzy Osbourne stars in an office setting for Workday and so on and on and on.

At this point, celebrities who refrain from doing Super Bowl ads are in the minority. No one ever has enough money.

Some of us are old enough to remember the good old days of Super Bowl IV, when the Chiefs played the Minnesota Vikings in 1970 and you didn’t see the commercials until they were shown during the actual game. Imagine that. Now an entire generation has grown up with the understanding that the Super Bowl ad needs to be teased or shown entirely on the internet and social media before the telecast to create the proper buzz.

Ranking the commercials also is a standard part of Super Bowl watching, popularized by USA Today a few decades ago and featured in many newspapers, websites and morning talk shows. When my former colleague Steve Johnson left the Chicago Tribune and stopped ranking the best and worst of the Super Bowl commercials, he left a void that could not be filled.

Much of the discussion on Super Bowl commercials this week will mention last year’s epic bomb, the Larry David-featured spot for FTX in which the comedian famous for being negative reacted to historic inventions with the catchphrase “I don’t think so.” It ended with the introduction of the cryptocurrency company and David repeating the line and adding: “And I’m never wrong about this stuff.”

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The viewer was told to not “be like Larry,” or in other words to invest in FTX, a $23 billion company that later would declare bankruptcy and see its founder arrested on fraud charges. Those who thought the ad was funny enough to invest their money in the cryptocurrency company learned the hard way never to trust a Super Bowl commercial that doesn’t feature puppies.

Suffice to say, the FTX ad won’t wind up in “Super Bowl Greatest Commercials: Battle of the Decades,” which airs Wednesday on CBS and is co-hosted by former NFL star Boomer Esiason. The annual compilation of Super Bowl ads is in its 22nd year, even though it’s just, well, commercials. Somehow people keep coming back for more, perhaps knowing they can vote like it’s a reality show and not an hourlong advertisement.

According to Deadline, this year’s special will feature an “exclusive” interview with retired tight end Rob Gronkowski, who will be featured in a live Super Bowl commercial for FanDuel in which he attempts to kick a field goal.

Gronkowski replaced Baker Mayfield this year as the most overexposed athlete on TV commercials, and if you’ve watched any playoff games over the last month, you’ve seen the run-up ads that tease Gronkowski’s upcoming kick dozens of times.

They’re almost as annoying as the “What’s up, Einstein?” ads for a wireless provider. The only way this commercial could end well for some of us is if Gronk were to double-doink his kick off Einstein’s head and knock him out on live TV.

Either way, we’ll all be watching, at least when we’re not taking a pee break during the action.