Super Bowl XLIV Commercial Scorecard

The Saints and the city of New Orleans were the big winner of Super Bowl XLIV on the field, which was somewhat of a surprise, but who would have expected a commercial featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda to be one of the big winners?

CBS, who scored the biggest overnight ratings for a Super Bowl in 23 years, charged an average of $2.6 million for a 30 second spot. It was a decent payoff for The Eye, who ended up having 68 different commercials overall.

The Snickers commercial featured football players getting tired and turning into old people like White before taking a bite from a Snickers bar and becoming their younger, more vital selves. Other celebrities featured in the commercials were Stevie Wonder, Oprah Winfrey, Jay Leno, David Letterman, LeBron James, Tracy Morgan, Danica Patrick, Charles Barkley, Brett Favre and Chevy Chase reprising his Vacation movie role as leader of the Griswald family.

That commercial topped USA Today's Ad Meter rankings and the ADBOWL Top 10 and came in second in the MediaCurves rankings to become the consensus critics choice as the top commercials with very few memorable ads in a very memorable evening for New Orleans. Among the other consensus strong performers were Doritos, Bud Light, Google and Cars.com.

USA Today Ad Meter Top 10

1. Snickers- Man plays football like Betty White until he takes a bite out of a Snickers.
2. Doritos- A dog puts shock collar on owner and takes his Doritos.
3. Bud Light- A man build a house out of unopened beer cans.
4. Budweiser- A fence separates a bull and his clydesdale friend.
5. Coca-Cola- A sleepwalker in the African sahara stumbles upon a fridge full of Coke.
6. Audi- The green police stops everyone in sight except for the A3 with its clean diesel engine.
7. E-Trade- Another in the baby series of commercials, a baby chats with his girlfriend and a jealous cohort.
8. Budweiser- When the bridge breaks, the town puts their bodies on the line so the beer truck can get across.
9. Bridgestone- Men driving from a bachelor party stop short just before landing in the ocean to deposit a giant whale.
10. Monster.com- A fiddle playing beaver makes it big after searching for a job on their Web site.

ADOWL Top 10

1. Snickers
2. Doritos- A man taking a boy's mother on a date is slapped across the face by the boy after staring at his mother and trying to take a dorito.
3. Volkswagon- A remake of the Punch Buggy game is expanded to other VW models and Stevie Wonder even gets in on the act.
4. Google- A man goes through life, falls in love with a girl from Paris, marries her and has a child all helped by using Google search.
5. Doritos- Dog commercial.
6. E-Trade- Girlfriend.
7. Bridgestone- Whale bachelor party.
8. Budweiser- Human bridge.
9. Hyundai- 2020 NFL MVP Brett Favre at 50 years old wonders whether he'll retire, but knows that his 10 year Hyundai warranty will still be around.
10. McDonald's- LeBron James and Dwight Howard duel it out for some McDonald's fries in a poorly done remake of an older Michael Jordan-Larry Bird commercial.

MediaCurves Top 10

1. Budweiser- Bull and Clydesdale fence.
2. Snickers
3. Denny's- Chickens around the world become frightened when Denny's announces their newest Grand Slam promotion.
4. Doritos- Hands off my mom and my Doritos.
5. FLO TV- will.i.am's remix of The Who's "My Generation" is played over a slideshow of America's biggest news events over the last 50 years.
6. Budweiser- Broken bridge.
7. E-Trade- The babies take a trip in an airplane.
8. Intel- Two Intel workers look at a new technology as they flash back through the years of computer technological innovations.
9. Google- Paris love story.
10. E-Trade- Baby girlfriend chat.

Time magazine's James Poniewozik gave out letter grades for each of the 68 Super Bowl commercials, and three of them got A's and five got an A-. The Bridgestone whale bachelor party, the Google parisian love commercial and an excellent Cars.com commercial featuring Timothy Richman, someone who does amazing things as a child and uses Cars.com to search for his first car, all got A's.

Betty White's Snickers commercial and the Brett Favre's Hyundai commercial (Hyundai went all out in advertising the Sonata this year) were A- spots that were lauded by the other sites. One of my personal favorites was a Kia commercial featuring a monster, a sock monkey and a few of his stuffed animal friends dreaming about a crazy Las Vegas vacation, but waking up in the back of a little boy's Kia. Another great one given an A- by Time was a Simpsons themed Coke commercial and a promotion for Late Night With David Letterman with Oprah sitting on a couch between Letterman and his archrival Jay Leno.

There were plenty of very good commercials, but none that I saw as one of the all-time great ones from years past. Perhaps the passing of time will change my mind, but the Super Bowl XLIV commercials didn't seem like they were anything special.