I kind of thought the same thing after I saw it. At first I was almost horrified by what seemed like a waste of money. The ad was so spectacularly "Late Night Cable" it was unbelievable. But then at work tons of people were talking about the ad and how odd it was and how much it stood out. Hmmm... a low budget ad that has everybody talking about your company? Brilliant.

Okay, but who made the claim, "The sales-lead website generated more than 10,000 new customer subscriptions by late Monday...", and who verified that claim?

USA Today states that Akamai supports 21 of the 35 marketers in the game, but doesn't say whether or not Salesgenie.com is one of them. Is Gupta the one who claimed his company got 10,000 new subscribers? If so, did reporter Bruce Horovitz actually look at the server logs or some other audit trail to ensure this happened? Or are we all just blindly and happily believing the success story of the Little Ad Who Could?

geez, king, are you really that interested in tv commercials, or just bored with sports all of the sudden? i know it's a relatively slow week, but there are interesting sports stories happening right now that i'd love to hear your take on: florida's monster recruiting class (maybe next year, instead of BSU, the gators ought to play the indianapolis colts); floyd landis' long-awaited day of judgment (should it really take this long to crucify someone for doing what basically every professional in his sport has been doing for decades?); tiger's baby and the potential effect of taking time off on his historic run of dominance (will fatherhood soften the toughest competitor in the game?); tyrus thomas getting fined 10K for running his mouth about the dunk contest (i know it's small change for a multi-millionaire, but who could blame a kid from the projects for lusting after a $35,000 check?); and, above all, john amaechi's coming out (this would have been your best pick, given the debates about homophobia in sports we've been carrying on for the past few days).

this is your third column in a row on super bowl ads. leave the tv commentary to your pal havrilesky--she's better at it. you are the man for smart talk about sports! i've suffered three straight days of blather about commercials! get back to the good stuff, bro!

at first I thought that said National SINGING Day. That might be a lot more interesting

How many millions of people watched the super bowl? And an ad touting a previously unknown website promising riches got 10,000 more hits? I don't think anyone that can be surprised by this is an expert at ANYTHING.

Okay, everyone is a moron, apparently even King is once in a while. I get it.

Does anyone find it ironic that King complains that the sporting media tries to find something meaningful to talk about in February? I find it more sad than ironic. You know he sat at his breakfast table this morning, all puppy dog faced, thinking; "What the hell am I going to write about? What the hell is any sportswriter writing about today? Huh. Maybe I should get some coffee. Maybe we shouldn't write about sports as if we are the final say, because often, no one knows who is right, well, us sportswriters are more right than my drunken fans, that is for Damn sure."

Here is an idea for the idea-free sportswriter: Report a feel good story about an athelete we aren't bombarded with by the media. No Bonds, no T.O., no Kobe. Say it with me: "No Bonds, no T.O., no Kobe." There, that didn't hurt too much did it?

Remember that autistic kid who hit like 8 three pointers during a high school game last year? That was cool. He even made George W. happy. I want sportswriters to be sports reporters again. King, I understand you write in like St. Louis or something, but I know you have access to a phone. Dig up a story that interests you, call people, and report it to us. You have a pretty cool job and we want you to like it. We all love sports in the first place because of all the wonderful lessons they can teach, and the positivity (and sometime negativity) that can result from worthy competition.

That's the term paper I would like to read.

If all else fails (and I'm sure I speak for the majority of your readers) you can make us all happy by writing about the Cincinnati Reds or the Buckeyes.

I was so bored, so antagonized, that I got a roaring headache.

I used HeadOn. I applied it directly to my forehead.

NB to advertising "experts": Paradigm shift in re: prevailing wisdom on "production values."

Gotta say I think SalesGenie's claim that they've made money on their ridiculously bad Super Bowl commercial sounds dubious to me.

They claim they'd need only 700 new customers to break even on their ad cost. Well, 700 customers paying their most expensive subscription fee of $180/month would generate a little over $1.5 million in a year. If I recollect correctly, their insipid ad ran twice, at a cost of $5.2 million. Not counting the $20 it paid the actors, crew, ad agency, etc. So we're already way into the fuzzy math territory here.

They also claim they generated 10,000 new subscribers. Well, are these actual paying subscribers, or 10,000 people who signed up for their free trial? I suspect the latter, as I find it hard to believe 10,000 people were so satisfied with their free trial (and who exhausted their free sales leads by Tues) that they signed up to pay for the service.

As for me, I'll continue to put more faith in independent "experts" than I will in interested parties who can dupe me with unverified "facts." Hasn't the Bush administration taught us all that lesson?

At the Super Bowl party I attended, as soon as SalesGenie.com popped up on the screen, several of us literally booed the TV.

Won't the vast majority of those high school football players who will be playing for major universities "for free" be getting full scholarships to schools that would otherwise cost anywhere from $80,000 to $160,000 in tuition for a four-year degree?

Yeah, not so much with the "playing for free".