Or would you prefer “The Power Outrage” edition? Friday Night Lights Out? Or, for you fans of ’90s Irish rock, “The Black XLVII” edition?

Starting Five

1. Jacoby Jones returns the opening kickoff of the second half of Super Bowl XLVII 109 yards (oh, 108 yards? Whatevs, NFL) to put the Baltimore Ravens up 28-6. Shortly thereafter, the Superdome is plunged into darkness, providing fans a brief reprieve from Jim Nantz and Phil Simms while Twitter experienced its own surge of one-liners. Me: “Beyonce opened for The Darkness” and “Goodell: ‘If I had a son I’d think twice about allowing him to become an electrical engineer.”

Thirty-four minutes later play resumed and the Forty-Niners quickly put power back into the contest before ultimately succumbing, 34-31. Lots of story lines here, of course: Three consecutive and feckless pass plays from SF from the Ravens’ 6-yard line when the running game was working so well; a safety in which the Ravens held EGREGIOUSLY and no flag was thrown (granted, penalizing that play would only have resulted in the same outcome, so Baltimore had nothing to lose; maybe the NFL needs to change that rule); the shameless beatification of retiring Ray Lewis (quoth the Raven: “Nevermore will I suit up…”), an outstanding middle linebacker whose displays of evanglism run counter to his actions. Keyshawn Johnson’s comment on ESPN typifies the stupidity: “I said before the game that if the Ravens won, Ray Lewis would go down as the greatest middle linebacker of all time.” Really? Why?

You want to read a good column on Mr. Lewis? Bill Simmons asks valid questions here and presents a terrific contrarian point of view.

2. Ravens QB Joe Flacco threw three touchdown passes and no interceptions, but we are still naming Beyonce the game’s MVP for her halftime show. Even if it was more of an aerobics workout than a musical performance. Honestly, that 13-minute workout would be better for you than Zumba. Nice mini-reunion with Destiny’s Child. With pre-game performances by Alicia Keys (national anthem) and Jennifer Hudson (America the Beautiful), it was a landmark moment for African-American females, all of it taking place in the Deep South.

 3. Former Navy SEAL and Iraq War sniper extraordinaire-turned-best-selling author Chris Kyle and a friend are murdered at, of all places, a shooting range. Suspend your inclination for irony for the moment — one bad guy with a gun, or at least one mentally deranged guy with a gun, took down two good guys with a gun — and recognize that Kyle was actually trying to help out a fellow Iraq War vet who then turned the gun on him.

4. The “So God Made a Farmer” ad totally reinvigorates the career of Paul Harvey, which would be awesome for Paul Harvey if he had not died in 2009. It was our favorite commercial of the Super Bowl, too; except that it had existed in a slightly different form on YouTube for a couple of years already. And now you know…the rest of the story.

The Budweiser ad, in which a trainer is reunited with his Clydesdale horsey while Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Landslide” plays in the background also hit some emotional cords (althouhgh, we will admit, for the first six to seven seconds we assumed it was a Burger King commercial). A quibble and a question. The quibble: That’s not Chicago in the background. You can tell by the blue street signs in the final panoramic shot that it is likely a city in California or perhaps Arizona. The question: Was the kiss between the trainer and the colt more or less provocative than the one between Bar Refaeli and the young man who looked like an extra from “When the Whistle Blows?”  

 

 

5. The Los Angeles Lakers are 2-0 without Dwight Howard. The Boston Celtics are 4-0 since Rajon Rondo was lost for the season. The Los Angeles Clippers, who earlier this season won 17 games in a row, are 5-5 without Chris Paul.

Reserves

No. 3 Indiana defeats No. 1 Michigan in a replay of the 1976 national championship game, but the team that is totally under the radar –okay, not exactly beneath the radar but certainly not garnering the national attention it should be — is Florida. The Gators raced out to a 13-point halftime lead versus No. 16 Mississippi on Saturday night before idling home to a 78-64 win.

Since losing to Kansas State on December 22, Florida has won 10 consecutive games by –are you ready for these margins? — 17, 21, 33, 22, 21, 31, 17, 35, 39 and 14. Average margin of victory? 25 points. Now just imagine if Bradley Beal had remained in Gainesville for a sophomore season.

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The good news? We have photographic evidence of President Obama firing a shotgun. The bad news? The shotgun has now filed for unemployment.

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Terrific job by Ed Sherman and The Sherman Report this weekend in Super Bowl media coverage. Particularly enjoyed this clip of the pregame show from Super Bowl III. Less is more, gentlemen. Less is more.

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Why has Joe Posnanski gone from Sports Illustrated to Sports on Earth to NBC Sports all in the span of one year? Posnanski, who for years was a columnist at the Kansas City Star, where he was consistently lauded for insightful work, finally made the leap to national exposure a few years ago when he took the SI gig. The magazine and its website gave him as much of a platform as anyone there bereft of Coffee Nerdness could have, but Posnanski would leave after less than three full years.

Certainly, there was some friction over how Pos and the mag handled the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky story and, for me, his November 6, 2011 column (which I can no longer find on the web) in which he recused himself from reporting on the story because he was in the midst of writing a biography on Paterno, is Posnanski’s “It depends what your definition of “is” is” moment.

Sports On Earth, which would provide Posnanski a national web platform with an exciting assemblage of talent, as well as allow him to cover his beloved baseball to his heart’s content, seemed like a wise enough move, especially since there’d been enough burned bridges at SI. But now, after less than eight months, he’s on the move again.

Some columnists are just THAT good. Posnanski, while talented, is not. Privately, some SI staffers have confided that he was a prima donna and, having worked there myself for 15 years with some of the biggest names in the business, I can tell you that almost none of them were that. Big egos? Yes. Hard to work with? Absolutely not.

There’s a certain “Aw shucks, I’m just a throwback” persona that Posnanski likes to affect in his work and writing and, as this picture attests, for his image. And I’ll be the first to admit: I hardly know him. But as tough as the media can be on a coach who leaps from job to job, there’s been very little scrutiny as to how come Posnanski has jumped from lily pad to lily pad to lily pad in the past year. And, yes, you can argue that nobody cares, but I can remind you that Richard Deitsch has more than 70,000 followers on Twitter. So, yes, people do care about what goes on in sports media.

We are not certain what Posnanski’s role at NBC will be, but since the network has no MLB, we’re not sure what the thinking was here on either side. As for him being an on-air presence, well, you don’t have to look like Josh Elliott to appear on TV. Then again, if it was a brilliant SI senior writer that NBC was after, they should have gone harder after Jon Wertheim, who did some wonderful work for them at Wimbledon last summer.