The Big Coin Toss

All the pregame hype and computer-enhanced analysis notwithstanding, the Super Bowl isn’t really about football these days, any more than the Olympics are about skiing.

Sports have long been heralded as the purest form of human drama, which may explain why television couldn’t resist sinking its hooks into them. So as we head into this Sunday’s big game and next month’s 17 days of Olympic glory, let’s pause a moment to examine just how thoroughly sports have been overwhelmed by corporate interests and converted from recreation into a nonstop promotional machine.

The only real problem with this rant is deciding where to begin. Consider, for example, the recent college football national championship game played at the Rose Bowl, when Disney-owned ABC originated its halftime show--for absolutely no reason--from the studio’s visitor-challenged California Adventure theme park, in one of those baldfaced displays of “synergy” sports fans are force-fed daily.

The Super Bowl, of course, has somehow been exempt from such concerns, having graduated long ago from a sporting event into something more: a national day of gluttony for Americans to unabashedly embrace the joys of advertising, consumerism and greasy foods. In this context, even commercials, usually dismissed as the bane of commercial television, are celebrated and exalted.

Unfortunately, the coalescence of sports, promotion and advertising has become such standard procedure in television that the Super Bowl no longer seems quite so special, the orgy of excess having become an entrenched part of our sports-consuming lives.

While watching even the most mundane sporting events, in fact, it’s impossible to escape commercials during the program, as networks keep finding new ways to shoehorn ads into every lapse in the action, desperate to justify the billion-dollar fees they keep shelling out--despite their pleas of poverty--for broadcast rights.

The examples are everywhere, among them sandwiching promotional spots between plays in football games and between free throws in basketball games. Technology has also contributed to this onslaught, as demonstrated by Fox’s decision to superimpose “virtual billboards” for its prime-time shows behind batters during the World Series, filling the screen with ads for “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Public” visible only to TV viewers who, God forbid, might otherwise focus on pitcher Randy Johnson’s fastball.

Gerard Medioni, chair of the computer science department and professor of electrical engineering at the USC School of Engineering, was instrumental in developing “virtual signage” technology, and he expects its use to flourish.

“Suddenly, the advertisement is encrusted in the content itself, so if you want to watch the game, you have to see it,” he explained, adding in regard to the propriety of that concept, “It’s only offensive if it’s overdone.... The ethical issue is going over the line of what’s outrageous.”

One viewer’s outrage, however, is simply another’s well-told “story,” especially when it comes to tailoring coverage to those for whom viewing the game itself isn’t enough. In the case of the Olympics, that means not just showing us who won the downhill but simultaneously trying to breed a new generation of fresh-faced commercial spokespeople, neatly wrapped in youthful patriotism, compelling personal histories and athletic derring-do, all set to a tinkly piano score.

Small wonder that there hasn’t been much of an outcry over the Olympics being tape-delayed for prime-time consumption on the West Coast, even though many events will be broadcast live in other time zones. Those who complain that NBC wouldn’t do the same with the Super Bowl are missing the point, because it’s accepted by now that the Olympics are entertainment, so in the network’s eyes a better analogy is the Emmys or Golden Globes. The transformation--from sporting event to “unscripted entertainment,” a la “Fear Factor” or “Survivor”--is complete.

From this perspective, the entertainment-sports relationship has become a pretty vicious cycle, with money driving every spoke in the wheel. Rising salaries lead to exorbitant ticket prices, preventing many average consumers from attending games in person. As a result, they’re left to watch their favorite teams on TV.

Yet because rights fees have continued to rise, the games themselves must make concessions to meet television’s needs: amending rule books to be more TV-friendly, accommodating more insidious methods of advertising and holding virtually all the competition at night--meaning that kids on the East Coast, the sporting world’s next generation of viewers, must stay awake until near midnight if they want to see the outcome.

Nothing exemplifies this more than college football’s Bowl Championship Series, a made-for-ABC concept that has done far more to muddle who can lay claim to the No.1 title than to clear it up. Too bad that the simplest solution--keep the bowl system as it was, then stage a championship game a week later between the top two finishers in the final polls--doesn’t feather as many nests with seven-figure payouts.

So before we sit down to digest our annual buffet of chips and salsa washed down by a mountain-fresh Coors or frosty Budweiser, it’s worth considering how these forces have conspired to reshape the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl and every other kind of bowl into a more unorthodox shape oozing ad content from every side.

Then again, one can rightly argue, what in the media doesn’t fall into that category at this point? After all, you can’t even listen to the dulcet tones of CBS radio commentator Charles Osgood anymore without having to endure pathetic plugs for Body Solutions, just as ABC’s Paul Harvey endorses nutritional supplements that can allegedly help someone old enough to have seen Jim Thorpe in the Olympics feel like a spry young colt.

Granted, none of this qualifies as the end of civilization as we know it, even for dedicated sports fans; rather, it’s become more like a pebble in your sneaker, the sort of persistent annoyance or minor indignity often easier to ignore than to remedy.

Getting up and turning off the TV would obviously send a message that things have gone too far, but old habits die hard, so don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Besides, with that bag of chips on the table just waiting to be washed down by an ice-cold brew, how many sports viewers could resist the lure of the couch long enough to actually make a stand?

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.