I am not much of a football fan and generally only watch one game a year . . . the Super Bowl of course! Since we don’t own a TV at the moment, we generally rely on being invited to a Super Bowl party, watching it at a restaurant or just doing without.  We were thrilled to hear that the NFL was broadcasting the Super Bowl online for the first time.

Here are my observations on this interesting experiment in online organization.

I was busy with household chores and missed the kickoff and joined the broadcast about 45 minutes in. My biggest concern was whether the broadcast would have enough bandwidth to be watchable given the huge number of people who were likely watching online. There were a few hiccups in the transmission when I first joined but they resolved in less than a minute and there were very few glitches during the entire game.

The online version of the game promised that you could change the camera angle, backup and rewind the plays, etc. You could change the camera with a click of the mouse to 4 preset views (overhead, from the end zone, the coaching staff, etc.). The views showed up in the tiny secondary window not the main window.

Football rewards the visual-spatial thinker. When I view the standard overhead football camera view, I find the amount of visual input overwhelming and confusing. I am not sure where I am supposed to be looking. My favorite camera views are the ones where we see in slow-motion the view of one particular player. For example, watching the quarterback try to figure out who is open or watching the receiver make an incredible catch.

I never did try to rewind the game but you could share various clips of the game on Facebook or Twitter if you wanted to.

There was a Twitter conversation going on in the right window pane. The Twitter handle was “PFTon SNF” which had no meaning to me. (At the end of the game, they changed the handle to “ProFootballTalk” which was clearer.) There were regular fan questions being answered constantly and the commentary overall was intelligent and not overwhelming to someone who didn’t know about football.

When it was time for commercials, the online experience was a bit of a disappointment. For some reason, the commercials did not stream just the same as the game. Instead there was a loop of the same 4 commercials. Primarily it was actor Rainn Wilson asking us to click on him to watch ads for Chevrolet on YouTube, which was sort of odd. If you did click to watch them, you then had the Chevy ad playing at the same time as the broadcast. Between the noise of the two competing audio streams and the concern that you would have no idea when the game coverage would start back again, it was a disincentive to view any of the Chevy YouTube ads.

Then there were ads for the Samsung Galaxy phone, GE, Budweiser and the Act of Valor movie. When I first saw the Samsung commercials I couldn’t figure out why they were making fun of people in the Occupy movement. It was only after the 40th replay that I realized it was not supposed to be the Occupy movement but rather people waiting outside an Apple store for the next cell phone release! The GE ads were positive and inspiring.

Online viewers had the option to click to watch the “real” ads but it took me until the end of the game to figure out how to do this. Yes, there were a few ads linked prominently at the bottom of the screen but all the rest were hidden behind another tab of the screen. During the actual game, you didn’t want to risk missing the game to watch the commercials.

The biggest disappointment watching online, however, is that they did not stream Madonna’s halftime show! There was no explanation for why this was. Perhaps it was the music industry exacting its revenge for SOPA, perhaps it was technical challenges. During halftime, online viewers were treated to a discussion with football experts and an interview with the head of NBC sports. It was a thoughtful discussion and reasonably interesting. (I, for example, was interested to learn that the coaches for the two teams, Tom Coughlin and Bill Bellichick, are considered two of the most “buttoned-up” and “organized” coaches in the NFL.) It did not compare to Madonna’s performance, however, and I was sorry to have missed it. I was able to watch a grainy replay yesterday linked on the Huffington Post but I noticed today it was taken down due to a claim by “NFL Properties LLC.” Madonna was incredible and the performance looked flawless to me.

In the last quarter, I was absolutely riveted to the screen. What an incredible game! I don’t recall ever being on the edge of my seat for a Super Bowl game and this one went right down to the very last seconds. Amazing! This is still not enough to make me a football fan but I certainly look forward to next year’s Super Bowl and hope that they will stream it online as well.

Bottom line, how did the online Super Bowl do? I would give them grades in the following areas:

Football coverage: A (I can’t imagine what more a football fan would want.)

Ads: C (You could watch them but it was inconvenient.)

Halftime show: F (Madonna gets an A+ but the F is for not being able to watch it online.)

Anyone else watch the Super Bowl online? What were your favorite ads or moments of the game? My daughters loved the Coke polar bear commercials and any commercial featuring kids (like the Doritos baby sling one). I think Honda’s Matthew Broderick commercial and Kia’s “Sandman” commercial were the standout favorites, although both were better in their extended versions available online before the game.