Super Bowl With a Smirk: Hamm & Brie at $233,000 a second, chicken wings, Mannings & a zodiac winner

Super Bowl With a Smirk returns this year with the first of five daily notes columns needling the self-important NFL and the gravitas of its preposterously big game. Flying under the banner, “Make Fun, Not War,” Smirk is an annual Super Bowl Week feature in the Miami Herald years we remember to do it.

Let’s begin with a few Super Bowl commercial updates because, as you know, the ads during the game are even more popular than the game itself, according to nobody at all except TV executives trying to goose ad revenue.

Spoiler alert: In a Super Bowl spot prereleased on Monday, Pete Davidson, who keeps getting work, appears in a Hellmann’s mayonnaise ad eating a ham sandwich. Except the “ham and cheese” are actor Jon Hamm and actress Brie Larson! Get it!? Play on words!

Fox TV ran out of SB ad space on Monday, with most 30-second spots going for $6 million to $7.2M each -- our roughly $233,000 per second. Last year ads by four cryptocurrency companies dominated Super Bowl night. Thanks to FTX’s bankruptcy, no crypto ads this time. “Thank God,” said Gen Z’ers tired of trying to explaining “bitcoin” to their parents.

Smirk is told Anheuser-Busch is keeping under tight wraps a new Budweiser commercial in which (we hear) a team of Clydesdales breaks ranks, marauds into a racetrack paddock and tramples the thoroughbreds that have stolen their shine.

Sunday’s over/under is 50, by the way. Points scored? That, too. But I meant TV ads featuring a Manning brother.

▪ Fans back at Super Bowl opening night: Middle fingers to the pandemic as fans were welcomed back to Super Bowl opening night for the first time in three years Monday night in Phoenix. Fans inexplicably paid $20 each to watch media interview both teams’ players and coaches.

Wild guess: Desperate photographers cajoled Kelce brothers Travis (Chiefs) and Jason (Eagles) to pose with fists up boxing style as if that weren’t the hokiest photo imaginable.

Also imagining reporters flocking en masse to Eric Dickerson, now on the Eagles coaching staff, only to learn, crestfallen, that it isn’t the Hall of Fame former running back, just some other guy named Eric Dickerson who’s an obscure offensive quality control dude.

▪ Wet blanket Madden sim predicts dud game: Madden NFL ‘23’s official video game simulation (its 20th annual) predicts a 31-17 Eagles win with Jalen Hurts the MVP. The hope for Chiefs fans? Madden game is a mediocre 11-8 on its picks.

Look to the stars, to the zodiac, for a more scientific pick. Kansas City is a Gemini and Philadelphia a Cancer based on the birth date of each franchise. Astrologer Roya Backlund says that slightly favors the Eagles, but adds, “Both teams were established during a Saturn-in-Aquarius transit, which only adds to the pressure being felt by both.” Exactly!

▪ Smirk Super-poll result: Flats and ranch, please: We asked two chicken wing questions in a Twitter one-hour flash poll Monday, and 2,997 of you weighed in. Flats clobbered drums as a preference, 54.3 to 45.7 percent. But dipping sauce was a tight fight, with 38.9 percent for Ranch, 35.8 for blue cheese and 25.3 wanting no dip.

▪ Pro Bowl review: It involved dodgeball and flag football and they let Tyler Huntley in, so we officially don’t care.

▪ Theft at Super Bowl Experience: Phoenix police are investigating the theft of $100,000 in property from the Super Bowl Experience, the interactive fan site at the downtown convention center. Cops say they are looking for “two unidentified suspects” believed to bear a resemblance to the Manning bothers.

▪ Protest ahead over game’s result? The Super Bowl is in Glendale. Uh-oh. Election deniers in Maricopa County plan to protest that Cincinnati was the rightful AFC winner, and a Smirk source says Kari Lake, who lost the race for Arizona governor but refuses to concede, plans a lawsuit contesting Sunday’s result no matter who wins.

▪ Public service announcement: Actual headline Monday at latimes.com: ‘Super Bowl 2023: What time does the game start? Who is playing?’

▪ Super Bowl Party du Jour: Large gatherings are OK again and even encouraged, says the National Chicken Council, which calls the Super Bowl “Wing Day” and predicts a record 1.45 billion wings will be eaten Sunday. That’s according to NCC spokesman Tom Super, who adds. “Yes, that really is my name.”