ESPN once again aired a Super Bowl week special "The Champions" which featured all most of their Super Bowl winning analysts on the same set.  Given that ESPN has a battalion of NFL analysts, you can imagine this set would be more than a little crowded.  The show was hosted by Mike Tirico and featured analysts (from left to right, first row then second row) Mike Ditka, Jon Gruden, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Keyshawn Johnson, Antonio Pierce, Tedy Bruschi, Mark Schlereth, and Trent Dilfer.  I'm exhausted just listing all those names, let alone watching the show.  The 2011 ESPN NFL analyst yearbook photos must have been taken directly afterwards...

I just feel sorry for all the Super Bowl winning analysts at ESPN that didn't make the cut for the show.  Where was third-time ESPN analyst Bill Parcells?  Darren Woodson won three Super Bowls and he's actually one of ESPN's best analysts!  Eric Mangini won titles as an assistant with the Patriots and Damien Woody won two rings too.  Unfortunately for them, they must have been placed on the inactive list for this Champions special.  

A more entertaining choice would have been seeing all the ESPN Super Bowl winning analysts play an actual game against the Indianapolis Colts.

H/T CaptTouchback

The best part of the Super Bowl isn't the game or the commercials... and it sure isn't the six hours of pregame coverage and endless week of hype.  By the time the actual game comes around, we're all pretty worn out on everything surrounding the Super Bowl.  (Did you know that the media loves having the Super Bowl in Indianapolis because everything is easy to get to!  How awesome is that!)  No, the best thing about the Super Bowl are of course the ridiculous prop bets.

Every year during the Super Bowl, you can bet real money on pointless, degenerate things like the length of the national anthem or who may get facetime during the game.  Here are the best of those prop bets from Bovada and our pick for each (not that we're endorsing actually betting or taking this advice, that would just be heinously foolish) so you can better enjoy the entire Super Bowl experience.

Tweets from Darren Rovell on Super Bowl Sunday - Over/Under 149.5

Our first prop bet actually comes from Bet Online and may be the weirdest Super Bowl prop bet of all-time.  It features Twitter aficionado Darren Rovell of CNBC.  Yes, you can bet on the number of tweets Rovell will send out for Super Bowl Sunday.  What a country.  Believe it or not, Beyond the Bets also has a breakdown of Rovell's tweeting from last year's Super Bowl to help you decide which way to go.  Rovell also reportedly has 55 tweets pre-loaded for the game.  (Pre-loaded tweets?)  If Rovell tweets from 10 AM till 10 PM, he'll have to send 12.5 tweets an hour to reach the magic number.  That's a lot of tweets even for Rovell.  But, with Twitter activity likely to be as high as ever during the Super Bowl, it'll be impossible for Rovell not to be in on that action.  Of course, Rovell could put money on the under himself and we'd be screwed... but, that's always the risk one has to take.  PICK: OVER 149.5

What will Kelly Clarkson wear to sing the National Anthem? 

Super Bowl/NFL shirt +300
Colts jersey/shirt +500
Patriots jersey/shirt +700
Giants jersey/shirt +1500
Anything else -300

This is easy money.  Kelly Clarkson has publicly stated she's rooting for the Patriots, but there's no way the NFL would want their anthem singer to wear the jersey of one of the Super Bowl teams for the national anthem.  The conspiracy theories would be out of control.  Recent anthem singers like Christina Aguilera and Carrie Underwood have gone for a more respectable style of dress that has been free of NFL logos and it just seems incredibly tacky to trot out an anthem singer as an NFL mascot.  The NFL has to draw a line somewhere with their endless self-romotion, after all.  Unless there's some sort of Spygate II situation going on, take "Anything else."  PICK: Anything else -300

How many times will Peyton Manning be shown on TV during the game? - Over/Under 3.5

The marquee prop bet surrounding the game coverage revolves around the biggest story of Super Bowl week - Peyton Manning.  The game's being played in his city, his brother is one of the starting quarterbacks, his biggest rival is on the other sidelines, and his own retirement-slash-will-he-leave-Indy saga has dominated the week's coverage.  If there's one person not involved in the actual game to show, it's Peyton Manning.  But to pick the over, we're talking four live shots of Peyton Manning during the game.  

NBC football producer Fred Gaudelli is perhaps the best in the biz and has said that he won't be "gratuitous" with crowd shots (ahem... Fox... marching bands... ahem) and the network has a good history of making sure the game takes center stage.  That said, with the other personalities that will merit some airtime during the game (as you'll see below), four shots of Peyton is unrealistic.  Peyton loves the TV cameras and the cameras love him, but this pick should be safely under as long as he doesn't suit up for either team.  PICK: UNDER 3.5

During the Super Bowl chaos in Indianapolis, an interesting nugget has turned up, courtesy of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The NFL will be expanding their primetime coverage to include Thursday night games on the NFL Network from weeks two through fifteen, and the expansion will include a guarantee that every team in the league will appear in a primetime game, be it on Thursday, Sunday, or Monday night, at least once. Thursday Night Football specials on Saturday nights will also be a thing of the past.

I assume that with the expansion, most of the league's bad teams will be contained on Thursday nights, so as not to dilute the pool of night games on NBC and ESPN. Now, I wonder what the league's strategy will be here, whether they'll use one of a good team's alloted primetime slots against a bad team, or just put two bad teams against one another to get them both out of the way at once.

Given the fan reaction last fall to the NFL Network's Thursday duo of Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock, getting more of them can only be a good thing. In our Pyrotechnics awards, Mayock finished third overall for best analyst for his work on the NFL Network, as well as on Notre Dame football. As long as Mayock and Nessler stick together in the NFL Network booth, we should be good to go.

[follow]

Welcome to this week in Screengrab Snafus!  ESPN had a little trouble with the graphic above during a telecast this week... unless they're sending some sort of secret message that giant logos are slowly taking over the world. (via aREEanneuh)

Josh sent us this screengrab of TNT having a little trouble spelling "Celtics" on a recent broadcast, adding an extra "I" to the team nickname.  Of course, we all know that's not the correct way to spell Celtics this year.  You need to add extra "L"s instead of "I"s...

Via cjzero comes this snafu of a Predators-Wild game and an upside down advertisement attacking the players on the ice.

And finally comes this amazing snafu from Tim Burke from ESPNU.  Evidently, nobody at the network knows the difference between "parity" which means competitive balance, and "parody" which is a comedic imitation.  This is a parody of a screengrab that was supposed to be talking about parity... 

That was your week in Screengrab Snafus, next time be careful out there!

I'm sure most of us have seen this commercial, probably multiple times. But on Sunday, we're going to be seeing Mean Joe Greene again...only he won't be shilling Coca-Cola.

Downy, you know, the fabric softener company, is bringing Greene back for a commercial during Super Bowl Sunday. Instead of getting a bottle of Coke, Greene will instead be getting a bottle of Downy Unstoppables, and taking a whiff.

Advertising industry, why must you bastardize history? When I think of Mean Joe Greene and Super Bowl commercials, I think of him chugging a Coke, and throwing his jersey to a young child. I am absolutely, positively never going to recognize him as "the guy in the Downy commercial." Furthermore, why would Downy decide to use him in a commercial? I'm willing to bet that the percentage of men watching the game that also buy fabric softener is low, and that the percentage of women who are watching the game and buy fabric softener and ALSO recognize Joe Greene is low. It would be like having Joy Behar in a commercial for Advance Auto Parts.

The commercial will air on the pregame show between 5:30 and 6:00. And for those of you that like your nostalgia, here's the original Mean Joe Greene Super Bowl commercial...

[h/t: Huffington Post]

Earlier this week, Peter Schrager and Esquire put together a fabulous, well-sourced list of the Top 10 current NFL players that you'll see next on television.  Given the sheer amount of NFL coverage and five networks in play (ESPN, NBC, CBS, Fox, NFLN), there will always be jobs available for players that want to make the transition to being in front of the cameras.  Esquire talked to agents, TV execs, writers, and nearly everyone in the industry to compile their list.  The best part about the list is the honesty of unnamed industry insiders speaking about notable flops.  "More often than not, we have been wrong. Tiki Barber was supposed to be the best at this. He sucked. Joe Montana? The same thing."  (I'm guessing ESPN knew Emmitt Smith was going to be terrible from the beginning.)

Below we've listed the Esquire Top 10, but why not have even more fun with the list.  Since we've just endured National Signing Day, we'll also project where each player will analyze in their post-playing media career.  If only Peyton Manning were able to hold a press conference and pick up a CBS hat from a table, that might actually be compelling television.

1) Peyton Manning
Projection: CBS #1 Booth
Analysis: One agent quoted says Manning could have any seat he wants in broadcasting.  A media reporter says he'll be the most sought after ex-player in the history of television.  Seeing as how Peyton Manning has never met an interview, commercial, or TV camera he didn't like so a media career is extremely likely.  With his career in doubt, that may happen sooner rather than later.  The perfect fit for him is stepping into the #1 CBS booth alongside Jim Nantz.  Top game analysts at each network are all about quarterbacks (Simms, Aikman, Jaws) and it's conceivable for Manning to immediately be among the best of the bunch from Day 1.  A megastar like Peyton Manning shouldn't be crowded out in a studio with loud noises cancelling him out.  The booth is where he belongs.  With AFC games on CBS and Phil Simms' analysis seeing a sharp decline in the last few years, it makes too much sense to not make this happen... if CBS has the gumption to make such a high-profile move.

This is Savalace Townsend from Arkansas Pine-Bluff, one of those tiny schools that makes the NCAA tournament once in a blue moon, and then is always in the play-in game. Anyway, they were playing Grambling State and Townsend absolutely destroys a Grambling State player like something you'd see on a Blake Griffin highlight reel.

And now, the reason why we're here: the announcer's call of the incredible dunk. He's so muted, so understated. "Are you kidding me?" Instead of sounding like he's calling one of the craziest plays he'll see during this or any season, he's talking like a baseball announcer that sees a single up the middle in the 8th inning of a 9-2 game. You know that sound in an announcer's voice, that bored, disinterested type of voice... kind of like Joe Buck doing a baseball game. 

At any rate, it was a phenomenal dunk by Townsend that really got downplayed by a tepid call. This is why Gus Johnson needs to be cloned about 100 times, ladies and gentlemen.

[h/t: Ballin Is A Habit]

[follow]

We've felt it our duty here at AA to keep you all aware of the latest on Craig James' ill-fated Senate run in Texas.  We've already seen James' laughable political ads, covered the fact that he's polling at about 4% with unfavorable numbers through the roof, and looked at the threats of perjury from Mike Leach's attorney.

But what we haven't heard much of, especially with regards to the Mike Leach fallout, is the defense of Craig James' alleged actions from... Craig James.  On Wednesday, James changed that by appearing on the radio in the place where he is least popular - Lubbock, Texas.  That's the home of Mike Leach's former employer Texas Tech.  The full interview is online at KFYO if you can stomach James talking about balanced budgets and mayonnaise sandwiches.  But, from our own suffering through the interview along with the help of Tom Benning from the Dallas Morning News, enjoy the best (or is it worst) from the mayor of "Real Street" below:

"I'd wake up in the middle of the night looking at the ceiling thinking about our foreign policy."

-Obviously, Craig James was such a crappy football analyst because he was distracted by our trade deficit with China and transpiring events in the Euro Zone.  I wonder if Vladimir Putin ever wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about the spread offense. 

"There's some people who won't understand. There's some people, if they wouldn't defend their own son, I don't want their vote. I don't want to run with those kind of people."

-You heard it, Craig James doesn't want your vote non-believers!  This works out well because nobody apparently wants to vote for Craig James either.

"You know how many big, high-profile people have come and gone at ESPN because of poor judgment. Had I done anything remotely close to any of these things that have been alleged and said by Mike Leach, ESPN would've gotten rid of me a long time ago."

-People at ESPN with poor judgement?  You don't say.  Well, I guess there was this guy.  And this guy.  And this guy.  Of course, if the reports about James harassing the Texas Tech coaching staff are true, James should have been gotten rid of by ESPN on the spot.  It's times like this you wish ESPN had an independent voice who would fulfill their promise to explore the controversy surrounding James' employment at the network.  Moving on!

"I don't feel uncomfortable at all in Lubbock...I've owned ranch land, I get it.  I understand the culture of West Texas."

-Own a ranch, automatically you are a perfect fit in West Texas.  Eat ranch dressing on anything, you understand the culture of West Texas.  Why wouldn't Craig James feel uncomfortable in Lubbock?  Mike Leach is stuck in Pullman, Washington... a long way from any equipment sheds to throw James or his petulant kid into.

"What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong and it's never right to do wrong... I've got a backbone and i will stand against evil every time."

-This is one of those campaign slogans that the Pony has begun using in ads and on the campaign trail.  Instead of sounding full of integrity, it's just laughable when faced with all of the evidence stacked against James and his involvement in Mike Leach's dismissal.  It's like if Craig James says this meaningless crap enough, it will actually become true.  You also have to love James lumping in Mike Leach with generic evil like communists, the devil, or the Boogeyman. 

"Mike leach did what he did... he'll have to own up to the truth in a court of law."

-If anything has become clear, it's that James' "Real Street" is truly a land of delusion.  Clearly, despite all the reports to the contrary, James still believes he has done nothing wrong regarding his career at ESPN and his documented involvement with Leach's firing.  Once the Senate campaign is over, a possible lawsuit featuring James, Leach, Texas Tech, and ESPN may still be in the cards.  And the prospect of that might finally bring James back from "Real Street" to the real world.  

[H/T Dallas Morning News]

[follow]

NBC plans on adding Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Steelers receiver Hines Ward, and former Giants receiver David Tyree to their pregame coverage of the Super Bowl on Sunday. Here's the NBC Sports tweets containing the news...

It is an audition of sorts for the two active players according to USA Today, but I'm not sure why Rodgers would really need to audition for anything, considering he's entering the prime of his career as one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Why would he be thinking about becoming an analyst? Rodgers is being known off the field for his State Farm commercials, which are everywhere at the moment and making football fans across the country possibly regret hearing the phrase "discount double check" ever again.

But for Ward, the move makes a lot more sense. He's nearing the end of his career, and has reportedly shown a lot of interest in transitioning to a studio role once his career comes to a close. He has mainstream appeal after his appearance on Dancing With The Stars and is a very well-spoken individual, which could set himself up very well for his post-playing career. It's really a crapshoot with NFL analysts though, and the Super Bowl pregame show will be a good chance for Ward to get his feet wet and see if he's got a future there.

As for Tyree, I know he had the big play in Super Bowl XLII, but the helmet catch was his last one in the NFL. Perhaps NBC will be able to get out all of this footage in the pregame and not let it dominate the Super Bowl XLVI broadcast.

[follow]

That's weird, I've never heard testicles referred to as a "love stomach" before.  Anyways, that's Phi Slamma Jamma graduate and NBA legend Clyde "The Glide" Drexler describing Luis Scola's unfortunate hustle play and likely America's Funniest Home Videos finalist. It's also humbling that a well-placed basketball can reduce 6'10", 260 pound NBA star Kevin Love to a what we saw in this video.

Drexler even has some sage advice for NBA players in how to avoid being in such a predicament,

"You were taught when a guy gets ready to throw the ball back in bounds you gotta turn sideways. Why? You gotta protect the jewels."

You were taught that? That sounds like the absolute worst day of practice ever. If we're going to fine players thousands of dollars for not wearing collared shirts then I think it's time to crack down on the groin shots. Intentional or not, I think every male would support an automatic ejection for such an egregious play.

Now that that's out of the way, here's a related video that is probably the finest clip on the internet.

[follow]