Since most of us around here had to struggle to find some reason to care about the Super Bowl other than “it’s a day when everyone either throws or attends a party, so where am I going to end up?”, there was a lot more what-if rambling surrounding Aaron Rodgers and the 2005 NFL Draft these last couple of weeks. What if the 49ers drafted Rodgers instead of Alex Smith? Would Rodgers have brought the Niners back to prominence, instead of having their franchise set back by a decade or so?
Would Rodgers have succeeded with the 49ers’ run of head coaches and coordinators, especially after he would have been forced to play behind a terrible offensive line with no skill position players of any value as a rookie like Smith was? Is Rodgers-instead-of-Smith a tired topic? Of course. But besides rape allegations and bad weather, the Super Bowl didn’t leave non-Packers/Steelers fans much choice of what to talk about.
Most 49ers fans are ready to move on from all this rampant hypothesizing, even while watching Rodgers slice and dice Pittsburgh’s defense with no running game whatsoever. The Niners have Jim Harbaugh now, who the faithful hope will find a quarterback who’ll remind the 49ers of their past greats at the position. Maybe even Alex Smith!
(Ducking overripe tomatoes thrown at me by 49ers fans.)
Well, just because 49ers fans are tired of talking about all the painful things that watching a local boy make good brings to mind, that doesn’t mean Rodgers himself is tired of the San Francisco 49ers connection.
“It’s an amazing feeling. Something I dreamt about when I was watching Joe Montana and Steve Young back when I was a kid, thinking about being in this position, getting the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl, win MVP. I mean, this is incredible.”
You can’t blame Rodgers — the 49ers were his childhood team and he was sitting five feet away from Steve Young.
But c’mon Aaron, do you have to rub it in our faces? While, like you said to Young, you didn’t have a monkey on your back, surely the combined primate-like weights of Brett Favre and the fact that your childhood team passed you over for a spread-offense QB with waxed eyebrows probably motivated you to become the top-5 (3?) quarterback you are today. The 49ers and their fans know that while your career would have been different if you were drafted No. 1 overall, you surely would have been a better fit than A-Dot-Smith. We get it. Could you just refrain from mentioning the 49ers for a while? Let us wallow in our own little mediocre corner for a little bit, arguing over whether the team should draft a pass-rushing OLB/DE, a cornerback or reach for a quarterback that Harbaugh likes with the 7th pick, while in the back of our minds preparing for a ridiculously long and drawn out NFL lockout (if you thought Favre coverage was bad, just wait until you have Werder, Shefter, Clayton and Mort all doing daily reports about a work stoppage) that might actually hinder the NFL’s chances of setting viewership records for mediocre Super Bowls like yesterday’s.
About the game…
– Yeah, it was close. But man was that bad. Everything, from the anthem to the commercials halftime show to the game itself was forgettable and underwhelming. Actually, the anthem was unforgettable because Christina “hopefully we’ll look back at this phase of my career and laugh someday” Aguilera forgot her lines, but I missed that the first time because my friends and I were busy reminiscing on when she used to be hot.
– Put it this way: if I have kids, I probably won’t sit them down and regale them with stories about Jordy Nelson.
– However, I won both the first quarter and final score in our Super Bowl squares competition, the first time I’ve ever won anything doing that. Without the squares, watching yesterday’s game would have been brutal for everyone at the party. There were definitely people at our apartment yesterday who looked at that squares sheet longer than the game.
– Oh really, American car company? You expect us to go online and watch some made-up rally race between 10 douchebags, half of them sporting faux-hawks … during the Super Bowl? No wonder almost every ad agency has decided that commercials featuring animals, aliens or talking babies are the only way to go these days. All their other ideas are even worse.
– Eminem clearly decided, “Hey, I’m turning 40 in less than two years, maybe it’s time to cash in before my street cred has fully run out.”
– Wondering whether we’ll see Marshall Mathers as a detective in CSI: Detroit or Law and Order: Lyrical Intent.
– Here was my favorite Super Bowl moment. Just watch this NFL Network pregame interview and tell me Jennifer Aniston isn’t a little … out of it. She definitely enjoys rubbing the top of the desk, that’s for sure.
– Apparently we’re not exactly in uncharted waters with Aniston when it comes to this type of activity. Either “drunk Aniston” is the way they’re looking to market Just Go With It, or she isn’t taking the Adam Sandler-romantic-comedy portion of her career all that well.
