As a passionate sports fanatic, the mere thought of watching the Super Bowl—a magnificent display of talent, strength, and heart—just for the advertisements, is sickening to me. The desire and deter­mination within the eyes of those aching players, who have endured years of physical and mental torture simply for a chance as at a title is enough for me to plop down in front of the television screen, with pizza in one hand and a cold beer in the other.

While these heroic giants fiercely attack one another, thinking only of grasping that scared Lombardi Trophy, however, there is another ruthless competition going on in between the game’s every timeout or turnover.

This battle also has its giants, and like the Patriots, who are returning to America’s most watched event, there are the same players every year: Pepsi, Coke, Budweiser, Miller, Apple, IBM, General Motors, and Ford always return to the Super Bowl to have their own side competition that can captivate not only sports fans, but the entire nation.

The Super Bowl is the championship of advertising, and the most creative advertising agencies and companies desperately try to bring home the title. Companies use the festivities as a launching pad for new creative campaigns. So why not? It is the perfect test market. There is instant feedback with commercial rankings the next day, and where else can the advertiser find an audience that actually wants to see their pitch, instead of changing the channel or running to the restroom?

The Super Bowl is a great sporting event where watchers should come to see two great teams battle it out for the NFL’s ultimate prize. But in all fairness, while my bias makes me believe the real action is on the playing field, I cannot argue against the appeal of these marketing campaigns. They are new, witty, and often exciting. I love getting a gander at all the new innovative products on the market that are either too expensive for a poor college student or that I’m merely too inept to use.