Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Nixon, Cassius Clay and Me


I presume, unless you live in bubble, you know that Seattle’s underrated Seahawks gave Denver’s overrated Broncos a thorough flogging in the Ground Hog Day Pooper Bowl. 

The temperature at game time was a touchdown more than the best defensive team in the NFL scored. It was 49 degrees before the game started. If you turned it off early, the Seahawks beat the Broncos 43 to 8. The only fans who liked it were Seattleites. 

For me, it was deja vu all over again.

Fifty-four years ago, January 1, 1960, another team from Seattle, the UW, played the UW in the Rose Bowl. The U of W Badgers were rated 6th in the nation and the UW Huskies, 8th. Wisconsin was favored to win by 6 ½ points. Sound familiar? (The Denver Broncos were 2 ½ point favorites over the Seahawks).

The University of Washington beat the University of Wisconsin. Can you believe that Wisconsin scored just 8 points and the Huskies, 44. There were no Seahawks then. The University of Washington Huskies were the only game in town.

Like the Seahawks, the 1960 Huskies broke fast; they led 17-0 after one quarter, 24-8 at halftime and they scored the final 27 points of the Rose Bowl game.

The Denver Broncos scored their first and last touchdown on the final play of the third quarter and added a two point conversion. A grand total of 8 points for the offensive juggernaut.

Let’s turn this off right here and get back to Super Bowel X-whatever. There’s little to talk about, except maybe Gwen. According to Go Daddy, she doesn’t want her last name publicized. (I thought maybe it was Manning, but apparently it’s Dean).

She’s from Yonkers, New York and apparently was one of more than 100 people who wanted to quit their job in Go Daddy’s Super Bowl commercial. She’s 36 years old and spent her last 18 working for the same company where her boss until Sunday was “Ted” (no last name).

Her Go Daddy spot was the last commercial of the first quarter when Seattle led only 8 to 0. “I quit, Ted," Dean said in the $4 million 30-second message, while mouthing the words with a Muppet-look-a-like, surrounded in a room full of puppets. "Ciao baby!"

Dean's resignation isn’t the first on a major medium. Maybe you remember Greg Smith, vice president at Goldman Sachs, who said I quit in an article on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Then just last October, Marina Shifrin, who described herself as a writer, comedian and waitress quit her job with a song and dance on YouTube. The captions in her video stated that she was tired of her boss caring more about the quantity of the videos she produced instead of the quality.

The next day Shifrin got a job offer from Queen Latifa, who sang America the Beautiful at the Super Bowl.

How many TV viewers were left to watch the $4 million commercials after Seattle led 39 to nothing has not yet been announced. But at $4 million a spot a bunch of advertisers will likely want some of their money back.  Tune in tomorrow for record-breaking news.

For now (like Nixon, Cassius and Gwen Dean), I QUIT!