This weekend I will join the one-and-a-half trillion people worldwide who annually watch the Super Bowl on TV. Even though my favorite team, the Carolina Panthers, got trounced in the NFC Championship Game, I plan to watch because I like pro football and I think the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks are two well-matched, physical football teams.

Plus, it pleases me to no end that the so-called football experts crowned the Indianapolis Colts NFL champions back in November when they were 13-0. Peyton Manning and his Colts ended up winning two fewer playoff games than the Panthers did this postseason and will watch the Super Bowl on television with the rest of us.

I also like to watch the Super Bowl to see the power of advertising in action. This year, airtime for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl will cost advertisers $2.5 million (for you math freaks out there, that’s $300 million per hour of commercials). One of those companies ponying up their greenbacks this Sunday is Emerald Nuts. That begs the question: How many nuts do you have to sell before you pay for that one commercial?

The price of Super Bowl commercials has gotten so exorbitant that some longtime advertisers are bowing out this year. McDonalds, DHL and Visa have all declared that they will spend their advertising money elsewhere—namely during the 17-night Winter Olympic Games later this month. Advertising during that event ain’t cheap, either. NBC will charge advertisers a cool $700,000 per 30 seconds for the right to hawk their wares in between segments on snowboarding and ice-skating. It sounds good until you realize that the other networks will counter with new episodes of popular television shows such as 24, Lost and American Idol.

We will have to wait and see how Michelle Kwan fares against Simon Cowell and Jack Bauer.

NFL football is one of the most perennially popular and entertaining sporting events on television. That’s why it mystifies me that the networks broadcasting this cash cow can’t come up with better personalities for their pre-game, halftime and post-game shows. ESPN, FOX and CBS all broadcast extremely long pre-game shows and all three of them are completely unwatchable.

ESPN’s pre-game show features host Chris Berman, a likeable enough announcer who insists on giving every player in the NFL the stupidest nickname he can think of. As much as I love the Panthers, it pains me when their quarterback Jake Delhomme does something highlight-worthy because I know that I’ll have to endure Berman calling him Jake “Daylight Come and You Got to” Delhomme during ESPN’s post-game show. It really wasn’t funny the first time…now it’s just annoying.

Joining Berman on ESPN is Tom Jackson—probably the best football analyst on any of these shows—and former NFL players Steve Young and (when not in police custody) Michael Irvin. Young and Irvin can be counted on to bring up their glory days as players at least three times per broadcast, casting a sad, has-been pallor over the show.

CBS trumps ESPN by featuring three former NFL players on its pre-game show: Shannon Sharpe, Deion Sanders and Boomer Esiason, none of whom has said anything remotely intelligent about the game in three years. Sharpe and Sanders appear to be pre-occupied with some sort of fashion showdown from the zoot suit era as they try to outdo each other each week with their natty threads. I keep waiting for CBS host Greg Gumbel to lose it and walk off the set, but to his credit, he keeps his cool amid the ex-jock buffoonery.

Speaking of buffoons, FOX Sports just about has the market cornered. You get egomaniacs like ex-NFL coach Jimmy Johnson, and former players Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long in the same room and there’s going to be some verbal fireworks. Unfortunately, none of this verbal sparring amounts to anything more than shouting over each other. They are like Shakespeare’s tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Like CBS’s Gumbel, it is amazing that FOX’s James Brown exits the show each week with most of his dignity intact.

Fortunately Sunday’s big game will be broadcast by ABC, where true announcers Al Michaels and John Madden hold sway. Sure, Madden is a bit of a caricature of himself and its hard not to expect him to say “Boom! Tough-acting Tinactin” or “Ace is the place for the helpful hardware man” during the middle of the game. But he gets the job done, at least when not overstating the obvious or drawing indecipherable lines and arrows on the screen.

So here’s to Super Bowl Sunday. May the game be close, the action exciting and, the commercials truly hilarious. Hey, even if it’s a blowout, it’s better than watching the Norwegian bobsled team.