Unless you're a Seahawks fan, this year's Super Bowl was not so super. Seattle's blowout victory over Denver almost certainly inspired more than a few million viewers to tune out shortly after halftime.
The real contest this year, as in years past, was among TV sponsors who paid approximately $4 million per half-minute to push their messages to viewers. Much of the post-game commentary was devoted to who won bragging rights for 'best commenrcial'. But Michael Webber, Deputy Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin saw much more than the usual ads for beer, soda, insurance and autos.
Sure, the Super Bowl may be an American ritual. But if you look a little closer, Webber says, the big game reveals a national obsession bigger than football: an insatiable appetite for energy.
In his commentary for the forthcoming daily news program Texas Standard, Webber noticed a persistent undercurrent (pardon the pun) of energy consciousness: from ads touting energy-saving features of various products, to the importance of power cells in making one athlete's dreams come true.
