Thank God for the Super Bowl or we'd never see any good ads

Most years, the Super Bowl is just the thing that happens in between all the dancing animal commercials or, at worst, it’s just a blatant rip-off of the greatest sporting event ever devised: The Puppy Bowl. This year, though, I actually enjoyed the game, especially watching the NFL’s equivalent of the 98-pound weakling, the New York Giants, kick sand in the face of the sun-tanned, muscle-bound New England Patriots. This nothing this nerd likes more than watching an underdog win. (Sorry, Patriots fans. It’s a Michigan thing. We all have angry inferiority complexes.)

Okay, there is actually one thing this nerd likes watching more than Tom Brady falling down: commercials with dancing animals! Here are my top five favorite commercials from last night:

5) The Sobe dancing lizards -- The message on this commercial was totally lost on me, leaving me more than a little concerned that drinking Sobe will turn me into a cold-blooded, Thriller-loving, animated zombie iguana. But on the other hand, how cool was that animation? I love stuff that gives little critters form and shape – you could see their little tummy muscles moving with the dance. It was great. Go lizards!

4) (Tie) Will Ferrell’s Bud Light/Semi-Pro commercial and the T-Mobile spot with Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade – Sure, Ferrell’s was pretty much a rip-off of the great product endorsement spots from “Talladega Nights” (Snowblindness in cats!), but I still laughed. And Will kept most of his clothes on, too, so that was a big, big added bonus. And Barkley irritating Dwayne Wade by calling him over and over and over again made me chuckle. Also, a valuable lesson for the young people out there: begging to be in some retired ball player’s Fave Five always comes with a price. Just say no, kids. It’s what Nancy Reagan would have wanted.

3) The Justin Timberlake Pepsi commercial – Seriously, I’m a sad, sad cougar when it comes to Justin Timberlake. I’ll watch him do anything, even getting dragged through streets and lawns while getting sucked through a straw by a girl. Which…uh…seems weird now that I think about it. But hey, how ‘bout that CGI? And he looked cute when he stood up. Four stars from me!

2) Fed-Ex’s ginormous carrier pigeons – I would pay money to go see a movie where giant carrier pigeons took over New York City. In fact, I think this should be the plot of the Cloverfield sequel.

1) E-Trade’s baby trader – Boy, was that kid cute. The voice was perfect. All the schtick was perfect, like him hiring the clown with his newfound E-Trade money…and realizing how creepy that was. I loved the whole series of spots.

And, hands down, the absolute worst spot of the night was GoDaddy’s “we may or may not have a topless Danica Patrick on our homepage and just in case, you should go check it out” ad. On the one hand, I guess you’ve got to admire the blatant efficiency of the concept. On the other hand, are we still in middle school? I mean, I know that stuff used to work when you wanted to get the boys off the tire swing – “hey, look, a naked girl!” – but to think it works on adults at $2.7 million an ad is pretty depressing.

Let’s face it, though, they probably got a lot of hits.

Just like Tom Brady.

Sorry.