Before you say that football is far too big to ever disappear, consider the history: If you look at the stocks in the Fortune 500 from 1983, for example, 40 percent of those companies no longer exist. The original version of Napster no longer exists, largely because of lawsuits. No matter how well a business matches economic conditions at one point in time, it’s not a lock to be a leader in the future, and that is true for the NFL too. Sports are not immune to these pressures. In the first half of the 20th century, the three big sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, and today only one of those is still a marquee attraction.

Read the article and let me know what you think. Times definitely change, but could they change so much that football is no longer the dominant American sport?

If you’re aren’t aware, during yesterday’s Super Bowl performance came out to do a short rap during Madonna’s performance of her new single. At the end of her lines, M.I.A. added the line, “Yeah, I don’t give a shit” and then gave a hundred million people the finger. Here is a clip of the incident (it will probably be taken down soon).

Opinions are all over the place about whether or not it was intentional. A “source” claims she was caught in the moment, but I don’t buy it one bit. The same person who puts out a politically charged music video which YouTube permanently bans, doesn’t accidentally do something like this at the Super Bowl. She knew exactly what she was doing and that’s what makes it so great. In the same Super Bowl that featured former bad boys Motley Crue selling a Kia, M.I.A.’s gesture says something about authenticity and what it actually means to be rebellious these days.

At the same time it should (although it won’t) start a conversation on how ridiculous this outrage actually is, I could say more, but I’ll leave you with the image below.

Update: a quick Google search reveals that this line is actually in the original lyrics, wow that makes the outrage even less relevant.

Or has the internet rendered Superbowl commercials irrelevant? In the past few days car* companies everywhere have been “leaking” their commercials (along with many others). The average price for a commercial is now $3.5 million (not to mention production costs). In America alone, 1 out of every 3 people watch the game. Not a bad price to get almost guaranteed attention of that many people. But for that much money couldn’t you market an internet video and get over 100 million views (the amount of U.S. viewers of the game)? You could, but that’s not the only value in a Superbowl spot. Brands ensure that they are talked about as much of the game itself for days to come. The internet has actually exacerbated this. I can guarantee that Monday morning my Twitter and Facebook feeds will be cluttered by people sharing videos of their favorite commercials. Stephen Dubner from Freakanomics examines the topic in this interesting clip. Definitely worth a watch.

There is an old joke about trying to look up what time the game actually starts. The network covering the game wants you to tune in early and watch their coverage, so they aren’t reliable. Then a bunch of sneaky marketing people decided to write up a bunch of specific web content to get to the top of the results. These stories never answered the question either. They would be so key word laden that they made you even more confused. Seems like someone (Google?) finally fixed it this year. The game starts at 5:30/6:30 EST if the official Super Bowl site is to be believed (I’m still skeptical).

One final thought. It’s disturbing that the week before the NFL is finally going to stream the big game on the internet that the FBI conveniently decides to conduct a major operation and shut down most of the sports streaming sites out there? Nothing like a big corporation getting the government to eliminate its competition right before the big day, right? Yes, I realize these sites are doing something illegal, but these raids are just as shady.

Ok…one more quick thought: this is so dumb.

*What a sellout

Via ESPN, click to enlarge.