SUPER, THANKS FOR ASKING

A Super Bowl-related post, a couple days late and a couple dollars short (he typed, enveloped in self-loathing):

• A new word has to be coined to describe the experience, as a Minnesota Vikings fan, of watching Brett Favre blow it big-time: Schadenfreulicious.
  
  It was easily the biggest flop in a conference championship game by a heavily favoured home team (non-Bill Cowher division) since the 1998 Vikings. It's a pain that never ends.
  
  Hey, it was said here, after Week 1, that Green Bay "has enough D to get to (the) 10 or 11 wins it will take to win this division before Favre throws it away in the playoffs." Even with the typo, there's proof if you put it vaguely enough, eventually you'll look like a prophet.
  
  Basically, that meant a long season of being Coach Kilmer from Varsity Blues to Favre's Jonathan Moxon: "Keep it up, a--hole." Obviously, there's more to it than Favre (Mike McCarthy forgot to put running plays in the game plan, the Packers couldn't complete any of those crossing routes like they had all year and it was really too cold to play).
  
  Still, who knew it would all come together? Favre and the Packers lose to a team that the Vikes destroyed in the regular season. OK, so it means the Giants are playing in their second Super Bowl since 41-doughnut, but Vikings fans can handle the irony, especially since Randy Moss should surpass his numbers from the 2000 NFC title game (two catches, 18 yards) on the Patriots first drive.
  
• The irony of spending much of yesterday pointing out the errors and omissions of one Ottawa media outlet was that it pushed back pointing out the errors and omissions of another Ottawa media outlet by a day.
  
  CTV Ottawa did a fine job with the simulcast of the conference championship games, so long as you didn't expect to be able to see every play of a game or the New England Patriots locker room celebration after becoming the first NFL team to be 18-0 during a season.
  
  This actually happened: The clowns tried to jam in a newsbreak when CBS went to a commercial after the third Patriots touchdown. That meant viewers got to see a bunch of workers flooding the Rideau Canal instead of the ensuing kickoff, which for all we knew, could have been returned for a touchdown. When they returned to the game, the Chargers offence was already at the line of scrimmage for the next play.
  
  After the Pats won, CTV immediately cut away from CBS -- without showing the trophy presentation or getting any post-game reaction -- to go to Fox's pre-game for the Packers-Giants NFC game.
  
  You'll remember, of course, that at the two-minute warning the Giants had the ball and were trying to get in range to kick the winning field goal. CTV Ottawa came back late from the commercial break -- just had in a promo for one of those 250 spin-offs of CSI or Law & Order that had already been shown 63 times that day -- and missed a 14-yard pass play that got the Giants closer to field-goal range.
  
  It might be moot since the drive ended with a Tynes miss. Still, it's infuriating that year after year that something so simple gets screwed up by the Canadian rights-holders for the NFL, who reap huge profits from simulcasting the games while creating nothing of value.
  
  On a related tangent, Greg Layson of the Guelph Mercury points this out: What are Canada's three sports networks airing on Saturday night, when Carleton and the U of O will be playing in front of perhaps the largest crowd ever to watch a university basketball game in this country?
  
  Poker and UFC on Sportsnet, some X games-like thingy on TSN and a NBA game on The Score.
  
  That said, you can't blame 'em for being small-town-cheap. Canadians tend to look down on watching our own compete against each other, with the exception of the NHL, CFL and curling.
  

• Nice of Fox anchor Curt Menefee to diss the CFL when discussing Giants hero Lawrence Tynes, saying, "he went to the CFL, then he went to NFL Europe." Not only was it incorrect (Tynes played in NFL Europe before joining the Ottawa Renegades), but implied the CFL is a poorer brand of football than the since-discontinued developmental league.
  
• No word of a lie: Eli Manning's quarterback rating in the regular season was exactly the same as Rex Grossman's in 2006. Try not act too surprised if he regresses badly next season.
• You can't make this up: Brett Favre's wife's maiden name? Tynes.

(How's this for synchronicity? On Sunday, Favre messes up the playoff game, which is great to watch as a Vikings fan. Monday, Rob Neyer from ESPN.com links to a post here. Tuesday, upon finally getting around to writing a post about it, a Google search reveals an article where Neyer, a baseball guy, professes that he too is a Vikings fan, even though he didn't grow up in Minnesota.)