I know lots of thing go into broadcasting the Super Bowl. So much of it is carefully scripted and choreographed that you wonder how they miss some things. But no one even mentioned that the coin used for the coin flip flew to the International Space Station aboard Atlantis in November. Remember the game was played in Miami and Florida is the home of the Kennedy Space Center so these things are kind of a big deal locally. Of course the coin did not have the names of the two teams playing etched onto it yet. CBS failed to mention this in their broadcast (at least near the coin flip...if anyone saw it in the several hours of pregame, please let me know!)I will let you in on a dirty little secret: I played football in high school. In our games, the coin flip took place about 45 minutes or so before kickoff. Now right before kickoff, the refs and team captains would go to the center of the field, the ref would throw a coin up in the air, look at it and everyone would pretend that was the real coin flip. Yep, it was all theater. I don't know if they still do it this way, but I participated in that farce many years ago.
Our coin was just a quarter or something and didn't fly on a space shuttle!Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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8 comments:
I agree, that would have been something interesting to know.
I believe this years ads sucked. It has to be due to the economy and big corporate bonuses.
Did they have to give the Who Oxygen when they finished?
With all the other drivel and minutiae that is hashed and rehashed, this would have been something interesting to hear. Makes me wonder how many pounds of non-mission, useless items actually fly with each space trip.
That certainly would have been an interesting thing to report. I didn't watch the 8 hours of pre-game analysis as it's just too much.
As for the ads, I thought most of them were disappointing.
We saw the Who about 2 years ago and it was right after Daltrey had been sick with bronchitis. He couldn't sing then and sadly couldn't sing last night either. I love their songs but at their age, hitting the notes is impossible.
And there was a shuttle on the pad that launched hours after the game ended. It was supposed to go up Sunday morning, but the weather delayed it a day.
Don't get me started on the bad astronomy/asteroid Bud Light commercial. I have been to numerous astronomer parties and they are better and involve drinks that are much classier than Bud Light!
This would have been a better commercial then what was on..
Best Hotdog Commercial Ever
Great commercial, SER.
I didn't see most of the game, or the ads. I watched the kickoff, and checked the game occasionally, but I didn't really watch it until the 4th quarter. I don't know who the guys in the broadcast booth were, but they seemed namby-pamby compared to other sports broadcasters I've heard.
I don't know how much extra stuff they take up, KK, but it's not much in terms of weight (or mass to be more accurate!) Each crew member is allowed a couple of small items and then there are the promotional items like the Super Bowl Coin. Frequently these items are stored in areas that are totally inaccessible to the crew in flight...you know, "under the floorboards" figuratively speaking.
Here's my post on the Super Bowl.
Even though The Who's show was brilliant, I felt the that the band gave a sub-par performance.
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