The Super Bowl isn’t all that far away so it’s time to think about important stuff.

And no, that’s not the question of who plays in the game!  Vikings, Colts, Jets, Saints… truth be told I really don’t care.  (And that is NOT because the Carolina Panthers are long gone.  They’ll be gone this time next year.)  In fact, it would take so little effort for me to simply turn off football and never watch again…

But to more important predictions:  Super Bowl commercials.  And setting aside the already simmering controversy over the speculation that we’ll see Tim Tebow and his mother in a $3 million ad from Focus on the Family… It’s time to think about the coming colossal expenditure of money into a consumeristic orgy of all those pleasures you and I deserve and earn…  And wonder what they are – and what they say about us.

How many beer ads?  (Have you ever wondered how much less your Bud would cost without all those ads?  How much of that tall neck in the fridge goes to feed the Clydesdales?

How undressed will a certain female driver be in one company’s website ads?  (And maybe how she should figure out some of the “issues” her future colleagues in NASCAR have with her?  They don’t have the same bodies to market.)

Has anyone (really?  be honest here!) switched their insurance company simply because of a cute little green thing or a couple of cavemen bowling?  (Or this shrill woman with too-red lipstick acting foolishly?)

Will the “job sites” spend as much money this year as last promising folks those new employment opportunities just by hanging out on their websites?  Just how well did that work last year?

Will we be encouraged to buy more apparel with all those trendy logos that are produced in countries where people work for 10 or 15 cents an hour?  (Watch The Corporation – part 5 for an eye-opener here.)

And the pharmaceuticals?  Will they be there?  Telling us how to alleviate all those aches and pains while we watch guys on the field beating up on one another?  (Or better yet – blood pressure meds as we see the camera pan over the coaches’ faces on the sideline?)

And of course – all those healthy meds will be sandwiched in among fast food ads telling you how you deserve that corn syrup and saturated fat you’re consuming while you sit passively for hours watching all the festivities!

In other words… am I the only one to see all the irony in this?  What if?

What if we took every single dime everyone makes off this… Let the Saints play the Colts on some Monday night coming up and DVD the game… and give all that money to Haiti?  What would a world with priorities like that look like?  I don’t know – but I would sure like to find out.