If Not for Some Clever TV Ads, It Was a Super Bore

NFL REWIND/Super Bowl: Just like the old days when I was writing about the NFL and paying no attention to the Dodgers -- make it the good old days, if you ask the Dodgers.

A review of Super Bowl 40, and while it’s probably too early to say for a fact that the Stealers were in cahoots with the officials in swiping the Lombardi Trophy from the Seahawks, I know this, Joe Montana is my hero now for reportedly wanting $100,000 to attend the Super Waste of Time.

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THE PREGAME, pregame show ended with Stevie Wonder telling everyone in the football-crazed audience, “Peace. It’s time to come together before we’re annihilated.”

Then they started showing the commercials, the first one an ad that had everything being annihilated in the wake of a truck carrying an energy drink, followed by an Adam Sandler movie trailer that had him arranging it so a neighborhood kid got hit in the face with a baseball. In another commercial, an executive arrives at his office to find it being annihilated by employees searching for hidden beer.

It might have been more effective had they hidden the beer, invited Wonder to find it, then watched as he made his way through the debris, and popped open a cold one.

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THE NFL plays its fans for suckers all week, feeding folks hype with the help of a starved media corps, Jerome Bettis returning to Detroit, all right, but not getting on the field until the second quarter.

Stealer defender Joey Porter makes it to the Super Bowl for the first time in his life, but doesn’t get excited until some tight end from Seattle says something about ruining Bettis’ homecoming, and ESPN’s Skip Bayless proclaims this the greatest trash-talking moment in Super Bowl history.

The fact that I even know this adds to my Super Bowl depression.

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THE SAN Francisco Chronicle reported that Montana wanted $100,000 to join the other MVPs for pregame introductions, rejecting the $1,000 given to everyone else, along with two first-class airline tickets, a hotel room, use of a Cadillac for the weekend and party tickets for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Montana denied the report.

MVP Jake Scott took a vacation Down Under rather than attend the Super Bowl, and Terry Bradshaw, in Detroit earlier in the week, giving radio interviews, stayed home Sunday. A spokesman said Bradshaw wanted to spend time with his family. There was no mention, though, which one of his three previous wives he might be seeing.

For the record, former MVP Harvey Martin was also a no-show, and for good reason. He died in 2001.

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USC MAKES a point in every football news release and in the team’s media guide to not refer to the school as “Southern Cal,” so I would have liked to have seen the look on the face of Tim Tessalone, USC sports information director, when Seattle’s Lofa Tatupu told the world-wide audience he’d played at “Southern Cal.”

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IT’S LIKE they ran out of ideas when it came to tossing the coin. Tom Brady? I’d have given Detroit another glimpse of Barry Sanders, or had Smokey Robinson hum a few bars of “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” before tossing the coin.

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THE NFL was off its game, all right. The league staged a Super Bowl in Motown, and invited an old group of musicians from England to dominate the spotlight.

This was the granddaughter’s first Super Bowl, and I sure hope she doesn’t get the idea that all 62-year-old men carry on like Mick Jagger. That reminds me, I’ll have to introduce her to Dwyre.

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JOHN MADDEN, who likes to state the obvious, seems to have less and less to offer during a telecast. Al Michaels, smooth as always, would say something and then Madden would attempt to repeat it in his own words, stumbling and stuttering, I presume, because he realized he was saying the same thing as Michaels.

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JIM TUNNEY, maybe the NFL’s most famous ref and with three Super Bowls of experience, was on his couch watching No. 40, his wife wanting to know who he wanted to win.

“I don’t care,” he told her. “I just want a good game from the officials’ standpoint.”

It was obvious he didn’t get that, the officials making sure the Stealers won the game, but Tunney disagreed, saying he thought the officials “had a good game.”

“Those guys had to leave the field knowing they goofed,” I said.

“They probably walked away thinking they did their best,” Tunney said.

“I’ll bet your wife was ripping the officials too,” I said.

“She wouldn’t dare,” Tunney said, and why do I have the feeling that Mrs. Tunney spends a lot of time picking up yellow flags dropped all over the house.

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THE FIRST available date for a Super Bowl in L.A. is 2011, which is just about right if long-range guessers are correct and construction begins on a new Coliseum in January 2007.

The Saints are still the logical choice to move here, probably arriving for the 2007 season and playing temporarily in the Rose Bowl.

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I CALL it a tie for best commercial between the players practicing their “I’m going to Disney World speech,” and the mother and daughter arriving at the hospital for a visit to hear, “That killed him,” unaware that a doctor had just zapped a fly.

The FedEx caveman commercial was also a hoot, if you didn’t take Wonder’s speech to heart and didn’t mind seeing the caveman getting annihilated.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.