Super Bowl Special
Super Ads

The Super Bowl is it. It's the biggest sporting event of the year and one of the biggest television events of the year. With an average U.S. audience of 98.7 million viewers, the Steelers-Cardinals Super Bowl was was the most-watched Super Bowl in history, and the second-most-watched U.S. television program of any kind, trailing only the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983. And it's not just sports fans who watch - millions of viewers, in fact, tune in for what goes on when the play stops: the commericals.

USA Today ran a Super Bowl "Ad Meter" this year, which ranked the Super Bowl spots in order of fan approval. The top five ads as chosen by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter were:

1. Doritos' sponsored a fan-ad contest, and Joseph and Dave Herbert from Batesville, Indiana, won US $1,000,000 for creating this one about free Doritos being seen in a crystal ball, with different results for two co-workers.

2. A Super Bowl staple, the Budweiser's Clydesdales, were a bit again this year. The one about the Clydesdale having a love affair with a dancing horse was the most popular.

3. A second Budweiser ad with another Clydesdale was also a hit. This one had the horse showing off his fetch skills after seeing a Dalmatian fetch a stick.

4. Bridgestone featured Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead driving in a toy car on a twisty road.

5. Another Doritos ad that shows the power of crunch as a woman was stripped down to her underwear, then free money poured from an ATM, and finally a policeman was turned into a monkey.

Taking it a step further, MSNBC recently ranked the top Super Bowl ads of all-time.

5. Budweiser - "Frogs" (1995)

Three frogs sat on a log and croaking the words "buuuud," "wiiiise" and "errrr." Anheuser-Busch sold a lot of beer in the 1990s, but they also sold the frogs on T-shirts, mugs, key chains, and neon pub lights that populated every college dorm and apartment in the country.

4. Apple - "1984" (1984)

A frightening Orwellian scene is interrupted by a woman in red shorts, who hurls a sledgehammer through a theater screen. Then we see this text: "On January 24th, Apple will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"

3. Reebok - "Terry Tate Office Linebacker" (2003)

Workers at a fake company who breach office-etiquette become subject to the bone-crunching tackles from Terry Tate, a Reebok sneaker-wearing linebacker who admonishes his co-workers with lines like "Break was over 15 minutes ago, Mitch!"

2. Budweiser - "Respect" (2002)

The Budweiser Clydesdales, by now a regular in good Super Bowl ads, saunter across a snow-laden field and the Brooklyn Bridge before taking a knee in front of the New York skyline where the World Trade Center towers used to be. Budweiser returned to this theme three years later with "Heroes," where travelers in an airport stop to applaud soldiers returning from overseas.

1. Coke - "Mean Joe Greene" (1979)

Even though this spot actually appeared shortly before the Super Bowl, is there any beating this classic commercial? A physically drained Mean Joe meets a kid in a stadium tunnel after the game. The kid offers tentatively offers the menacing Greene a Coke, and after chugging the entire thing, Mean Joe gently smiles, says, "Hey kid… catch," and tosses him a jersey. Have a Coke and smile, alright.