The Guide

sizzling & fizzling
Who Was Hot and Who Was Not

?Rare is the NFL analyst who forcefully questions a coaching decision, as Fox's John Madden did when he said the Patriots were making a mistake by not playing for overtime instead of attempting to drive from deep in their own territory for a game-winning field goal. Rarer still is the analyst who admits on the air that he was mistaken, as Madden did on Sunday.

?Amid a sea of similar Super Bowl storylines, ESPN's Outside the Lines distinguished itself with a terrific feature on: the Wilson Football factory in Aida, Ohio, which made the game balls.

?Of all of Fox's patriotic pregame features, none was better than a moving reading of the Declaration of Independence by past and present NFL stars.

?We know Fox had five hours of pregame programming to fill, but the segment featuring a half-dressed Jillian Barbarie canoodling at French Quarter hot spots with celebrity flotsam such as Tara Reid was nauseating--even by the usually low pregame standards.

?He may have been a Beatle, but what on earth was Paul McCartney doing on Fox's on-field set during halftime? We would much rather have seen more of U2's mesmerizing performance.

?It was weird that Fox chose to follow a classy postgame tribute to the retiring Pat Summerall with NASCAR analyst Darrell Waltrip's and star driver Jeff Gordon's hawking of the network's upcoming coverage of the Subway 400.