The Dallas Morning News reports as the subject would have described it:

Pat Summerall died Tuesday. He was 82.

That’s how Summerall, almost a decade ago, said he would craft the first sentences of his obituary — short and to the point.

The legendary sports broadcaster died in his hospital room at Zale Lipshy University Hospital, where he was recovering from surgery for a broken hip, a family friend said.

Summerall’s comment about his obituary was made at his Southlake home after a 2004 liver transplant that saved his life. He was serious.

Typical … succinct … vintage Summerall.

His minimalist staccato style coupled with a deep, authoritative voice was his trademark as the pre-eminent NFL voice for a generation of television viewers.

Summerall worked 16 Super Bowls in a network career that began at CBS in 1962 and ended at Fox in 2002.

In the 21 seasons in which play-by-play voice Summerall worked alongside John Madden, they grew into America’s most popular sports broadcast team. Their work for CBS at Super Bowl XVI, following the 1981 season, remains the highest-rated NFL game of all-time, with more than 49 percent of the nation tuned in.

“I was so lucky I got to work with Pat,” Madden said in an interview around the time of Summerall’s transplant. “He was so easy to work with. He knew how to use words. For a guy like myself who rambles on and on and doesn’t always make sense, he was sent from heaven.”

Summerall did either color or play-by-play on 16 Super Bowls, working first with Ray Scott …

… before becoming 0ne of TV sports’ first players-turned-play-by-play guys:

Summerall first worked with Ray Scott, the famed announcer of few words. And that’s certainly where Summerall became the announcer of few words himself, although he was certainly capable of understated humor:

As CBS’ and Fox’s number one NFL announcer, he got to do a few memorable Packer games:

Summerall did other sports, most famously golf, plus tennis. He even did the NBA, including a game famous to the (few remaining) fans of the Bucks:

The former basketball player also did NCAA basketball tournament games for CBS in 1985. He did sports for WCBS radio in New York (whose first all-news day started with its own news — a plane crash into its tower), and hosted NFL Films’ “This Week in Pro Football.”

Summerall had a great voice, and worked ideally with his more loquacious partners, particularly Madden. Remember Scott’s stereotypical call — “Starr … Dowler … touchdown”? For Summerall, it was “Staubach … Pearson … touchdown,” or “Montana … Rice … touchdown.”

Ed Sherman asks an interesting question:

Could Pat Summerall have been given the assignment to call 16 Super Bowls, all those Masters and U.S. Opens in tennis in today’s landscape?

It is an interesting question. The networks likely wouldn’t have been jumping all over each other to sign a former kicker who really didn’t say much on the telecasts. It’s more about color and flash, and unfortunately, sometimes screaming and yelling in today’s game. Summerall hardly was a flamboyant personality. …

Summerall did it because of two main assets: A wonderful deep voice that punctuated his wonderful sense of brevity. He didn’t overwhelm a telecast. Rather, he melted into it, providing the ideal sound track to accompany the hum of the venue and the pulse of the action taking place down below. …

He played the straight man, always bringing out the best in his partners.

What Summerall did really was an art. Would it work today with the volume turned up several levels in 2013? Who knows?

Sports on Earth:

I still hear Pat Summerall saying something spare — “Third and ten . . .” — and I know the light has been fading outdoors. I know just as sure as any clockwork that Daylight Saving Time might be on its way, or that Daylight Saving Time has crashed in and blackened 5:30 already. I do not need to move from this seat. I do not need to look through a window. I know.

The deep, economized sound of the voice tells me the weather without telling me the weather. Of course it does. I know it’s quite probably crisp outside. I know the trees have taken on some mighty colors even if I’m not really looking at them during this game. I know there’s a plausible chance the sky has grayed, the birds mostly have left. I know that if I went outside and walked along the sidewalk to the driveway, the leaves might make that great sound when they crunch under my sneakers. I might look down the street to a distant front yard, see some kids playing, some hopeless bomb flying incomplete. …

In the den where the voice resonates, or in living rooms otherwise silent, or at the neighbors’ where you enter the house and can hear it from the other room, or in those houses where it maybe even comes from two places, the voice signals the momentous. It comes from on high in Irving, Texas, or from the Meadowlands of New Jersey, or from out by the bay in San Francisco, or Lambeau Field in later years, from the weighty games of the then-dominant NFC. It means the game matters, might sway the conference race, might determine home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

For 28 seasons and 16 Super Bowls the voice implies gravitas, for a time alongside Tom Brookshier, then 22 seasons mingled with John Madden in the two-man NFL symphony, the voice giving way to the tick-tock of “60 Minutes,” or sounding kind of funny giving the Fox evening lineup.

I hear the voice, and I know the wall calendar has just about run out of pages. I can taste my mother’s Thanksgiving dressing, picture the grandparents driving in. The Christmas tree stands right over there; it seems so familiar with the voice. Friends will be over. May I get you a drink? Can’t wait for the playoffs. There goes Madden, explaining some contour of the game you did not know.

Now, here’s Summerall: “Third and 10 . . .”

The voice lets the game supply the drama, as all its admirers acknowledge and commend. It’s reliable, egoless and a bit clumsy on occasion. You might root for it through its unexpected pauses. There it goes all low and minimalist without a hint of a shout, as Adam Vinatieri’s field goal sails through to beat the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI: “And it’s right down the pipe.” Here it rises just a bit on the word “good” as Matt Bahr’s field goal at Candlestickstaves off the 49ers dynasty in the 1991 NFC Championship Game: “The kick . . . (pause) . . . is good . . . (pause) . . . There will be no three-peat.” Here it lets Marcus Allen’s amazing 74-yard run against Washington do the goose-bumping: “Here’s Marcus Allen . . . (pause) . . . cutting back up the field and Marcus Allen could be gone.”

Allen runs the last half of the field sans narration.

All you hear is the roar.

It makes your neck hairs salute.

Awful Announcing adds:

No matter the venue, the broadcast partner, or the sport, Summerall’s voice was always the same.  Calm.  Commanding.  Reliable.  That voice is one that will never be duplicated.  When you heard Pat Summerall’s voice, you knew what you were watching mattered.

His understated delivery made sure the game was always at center stage where it belonged.  He never talked more than his broadcast partners.  John Madden would never have been John Madden without a partner like Pat Summerall.  Perhaps that’s one of the greatest testaments to one of the greatest careers in not just sports broadcasting, but all of broadcasting.

Summerall’s legacy has been far underrated by the social media generation.  To be fair, maybe we’ve lost our way a bit in what makes the best sports announcers.  Pat Summerall was never someone who would compel fans to make Youtube tribute videos.  I even tried to find a favorite Summerall call from Youtube to try to insert in this article, but perhaps it’s fitting there really isn’t one.  Summerall didn’t need to jump out of his chair or come up with clever nicknames to do his job.  In a sports world that lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps on viral videos, highlights, and catchphrases, Summerall was none of that flash.  Only substance.  Only the best.

In the ’70s and ’80s, when I hadn’t figured out that, yes, you can like more than one announcer, I preferred NBC’s Dick Enberg to Summerall. Today, ABC’s Al Michaels is the best football announcer. But Summerall taught a valuable lesson to someone who yearned to have his job. If you have a talkative partner, less can really be more.

I was going to write a blog for Friday suggesting that Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice should be fired, not merely suspended, for this:

By 10 a.m. yesterday, Rutgers beat me to it (from NJ.com):

The university terminated Rice’s contract Wednesday morning following a meeting with athletic director Tim Pernetti in his office at the Rutgers Athletic Center. Rice’s job status became tenuous when videotapes of his actions during practices from his first and second years on campus were made public by ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” program on Tuesday.

Rice was seen throwing basketballs at players — including one instance, throwing it at a player’s head — as well as shoving players during a practice. He was also heard using the term “f—— faggot” at a player and using abusive language.

The cynical could look at this as an attempt by Rutgers’ athletic director to save his own skin …

“I am responsible for the decision to attempt a rehabilitation of coach Rice,” Pernetti said in a statement released by the university Wednesday morning. “Dismissal and corrective action were debated in December and I thought it was in the best interest of everyone to rehabilitate, but I was wrong. Moving forward, I will work to regain the trust of the Rutgers community.”

… or as a case of using a word that alienated the wrong people:

Pernetti, who had given Rice a vote of confidence to return next season for the fourth year of his original five-year deal, had stated Tuesday during a brief sitdown with local media that the matter had been dealt with already. But with political heavyweights and leaders of both the country and the state’s LGBT equal rights groups calling for Rice to be terminated for using homophobic slurs, the outcome became inevitable.

Exactly what changed between December, when Rice was suspended, and yesterday? ESPN got hold of the video, that’s what.

Facebook Friend Kyle Cooper points out:

Look, coaches yell. Coaches scream. They may occasionally swear. But there’s a clear difference between being upset and being abusive. Just as there’s a clear difference between solving a problem and hoping it goes away. The focus of this Deadspin article is spot-on: Rutgers knew about Mike Rice’s, uh, methods, and its first impulse was to sweep it under the rug. Only when Rice’s behavior and the administration’s soft-pedaling were finally exposed did the university take action.

Recruiting is a cut-throat activity even when it doesn’t involve an issue that you just gift-wrapped for every conceivable opponent. You can hear the negative recruiting now, can’t you? “Rutgers is a fine school, but let’s just say they’re not much for protecting their student-athletes. They won’t look out for your best interests. You won’t have to worry about that at (university name here). We’ll never put you in a bad situation like that.”

What do a coach’s tirades teach? Football coach Bill Walsh had an interesting approach — when his assistant coaches started yelling at 49ers players, he would yell at the assistants, telling them to teach, not yell.

I’ve seen in a few different places defenses of, if not Rice exactly, “old-school coaches” who, if the writer is to be believed, said and did much worse things than Rice. Well, for one thing, that was then, and this is now.

The opposite of Rice perhaps is shown in this observation about Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, from ESPN.com:

Sports have made room for all sorts of personalities. From the crying Dick Vermeils to the restrained Tom Landrys, there’s no genetic strain that works better than another.

But the most fundamental skill for success seems to be the ability to deal — to deal with life and all its ups, downs, twists and turns.

In that, Boeheim is a master, which has served him well.

“There have been great books and great lectures and great speeches written to suggest what you do to avoid distractions,” he said. “Most people can’t do that. We can’t do that. Life is full of situations. You either handle them or you don’t. That’s nothing new. There are situations every year. Some you see, some you don’t, but there’s always something. If you can’t get through all of that, you’re not in this business very long.”

The coach who might be the best in college basketball today, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, has the coaching ability of his mentor, Indiana and Texas Tech’s Bobby Knight, without the public displays of out-of-control temper. CBS Sports produced a documentary about the early ’90s Duke teams, which featured two players who didn’t necessarily get along, Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley. Krzyzewski reportedly didn’t publicly berate them, or told one or both to knock it off; he simply told them that if they couldn’t get along, Duke wouldn’t win.

There are three questions that, if you can answer any one of them with a “yes,” justify Rice’s firing, and well before yesterday:

1. Is Rice’s conduct acceptable in the workplace today? 
2. Would you like to be the subject of verbal and aerial (as in thrown basketballs) assaults from someone above you?
3. Would you like your son to be treated like that?

On the other hand, maybe something did sink in, based on Rice’s comments reported by ESPN.com:

Rice, in an impromptu news conference outside his home, apologized “for the pain and hardship that I’ve caused.”

“There will never be a time when I use any of that as an excuse,” Rice said, referring to his efforts toward a change in behavior. “I’ve let so many people down. My players, my administration, Rutgers University, the fans. My family, who’s sitting in their house just huddled around because of the fact that their father was an embarrassment to them.

“It’s troubling, but I will at some time, maybe I’ll try to explain it, but right now, there’s no explanation for what’s on those films. Because there is no excuse for it. I was wrong. I want to tell everybody who’s believed in me that I’m deeply sorry.”

Last year, I published the two NCAA basketball tournament (for fun and amusement only!) brackets I was in.

In both  cases, I picked the national champion correctly, Kentucky.

This year, I’m considerably more busy. I also didn’t have time to find a system, as I did last year. On the other hand, this year’s tournament is a considerably more wide open tournament, so maybe a system won’t help this year anyway.

This bracket is from a pool I’ve been in for several years:

The other bracket has a few differences, but the same Final Four — Duke, Gonzaga, Miami and Kansas — and the same national championship, Duke over Kansas.

I can’t say I’m particularly enthused about this. It is a difficult tournament to figure out this year. (For instance, last year’s national champion, Kentucky, didn’t get into the tournament. The Wildcats did get into the National Invitation Tournament, only to lose their first-round game Tuesday. Adolph Rupp is rolling over in his grave.) Maybe that’s why I picked three familiars, and why I don’t have Miami winning it all. I think that the team that wins it all is usually a team that’s been around the Final Four before, which certainly describes both Duke and Kansas.

I have Wisconsin and Marquette winning one game each. This Badger team is capable of anything from making the Final Four, which a few people I know have  predicted, to losing Friday. They are that inconsistent, and I don’t think you become magically consistent in March. To coin a phrase used at numerous levels of numerous sports, you are what you are.

I am unimpressed with any Big Ten team, including Wisconsin, which is why I have none of them going  to the Final Four. There are two ways of looking at that, I suppose — it’s a really even conference, or it’s not a very good conference. And there is certainly no team that stands head and shoulders over everyone, including regular-season champion Indiana and tournament champion Ohio State, both of whom lost to the woefully inconsistent Badgers earlier this season.

And, as of 11 a.m., away we go,. And if we’re lucky, we’ll see some of these:

The high school boys basketball playoffs start this week. (Weather permitting in some places.) That means the NCAA college basketball tournaments are imminent.

Grantland has a story about college basketball’s tempo, or increasingly, lack thereof (which I wrote about a year ago):

It has become fashionable, of course, to assert that Division I college basketball is “in trouble,” that it has become so slow and staid and overcontrolled it might ultimately wither into irrelevance. Some of this is hyperbole, since there’s an obvious upside to the parity that low scoring engenders, and since the NCAA tournament is still a financial windfall, and since a team like Wisconsin, under Bo Ryan, can drag games into the 30s and still win games and fill seats. But it is impossible not to notice that something is happening, that the balance has been thrown off, and it is silly not to acknowledge that the overarching trend is impacting how people view college basketball. “I’m not a guy who’s too concerned about whether the game is popular or not,” says Ken Pomeroy, who pioneered the notion of advanced college basketball statistics at his website, “but it certainly hurts the perception of it.”

Here is what the numbers confirm: Overall scoring, at slightly less than 68 points per game, is at its lowest level in three decades, and possessions are growing longer and longer. The game, as a whole, is slower and less free-flowing than it used to be. There are distinct lulls, and transition baskets are more and more difficult to come by. Ask why this is happening, and it becomes a Rorschach test: You will hear a dozen hypotheses from a dozen different sources, ranging from the length of the shot clock to the increased physicality on the perimeter to poor shot selection to the lack of competent post players to the profusion of timeouts to the NBA’s one-and-done rule to the spike in coaches’ salaries, all of which are entirely speculative, and any of which might be at least somewhat viable.

The last of Michael Weinreb’s hypotheses leads to another that may or may not be tied to coach salaries, because it applies to high school coaches too, most of whom are paid in no more than four figures. Weinreb interviewed former Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs, whose Sooner teams were among the nation’s scoring leaders:

Toward the end of his Oklahoma tenure, Tubbs says, he could feel the culture changing, veering toward the conservatism he both embraces outside of the game and despises within it. (In 1991, a few years before Tubbs left Oklahoma for TCU, overall scoring peaked at 77 points per game, and it’s been trailing downward ever since.) Tubbs brought up the shadow of “political correctness” with me several times, which seems like a bit of an oblique connection, but I think what he was trying to say is that the coaches who should be willing to gamble — coaches, like Tubbs, who are blessed with superior talent — simply don’t think it’s worth the risk anymore. And so they take command of everything that’s happening on the floor. They slow the game down to call offensive sets, and they play it safe on defense rather than risk giving up easy layups in transition. And the very notion of running wild like Tubbs’s teams did, or of throwing caution to the wind like Paul Westhead’s Loyola Marymount teams did, or of raising hell like Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas teams did, becomes a concept too fraught with potential danger to even consider implementing. The favorites now play at the underdog’s pace. And this, one coach told me, is how a team like Kansas loses to an obvious inferior like TCU.

“To take command of everything that’s happening on the floor” happens to blunt one of the supposed benefits of athletics. Players of team sports learn to work as a team, to realize the greater good is more important than the individual, and how to deal with success and failure. They also should learn decision-making on the fly, because in life sometimes you have to make important decisions quickly. Student–athletes do not learn when their coach does all the thinking and makes all the decisions. Employers do not want automatons working for them.

Of course, any story about slow-tempo basketball has obligatory shots at Wisconsin. Tubbs was not known for caring about others’ opinions when he coached, and that apparently hasn’t changed:

“The thing you’ve got to look at is if the stands are empty in the arena. I’m seeing a lot of empty seats. You can play really conservative if you fill the gym. At Wisconsin, they don’t know any better, do they?”

Tubbs’ rude comment about Wisconsin aside, he’s right about the financial issues, which, as I’ve argued before, apply to football as well. Division I college coaches of revenue sports (primarily football and men’s basketball, plus men’s hockey at Wisconsin) are judged not merely on wins and losses, but on whether they fill their stadiums. The revenue sports at D-I schools fund all the other sports. When Bret Bielema left Wisconsin for Arkansas, I argued then (and believe now) that it was a stupid move because he was in no danger of losing his UW job because the Badgers filled Camp Randall Stadium, whether or not fans were always pleased with what they were seeing, or paying.

Whether UW fans like games in the 40s or not, Bo Ryan is similarly in no danger of losing his Wisconsin job. The aforementioned Pomeroy ranks Wisconsin fifth best in Division I and second best in the Big Ten, despite its 19–8 record. Ryan’s accomplishments at UW — Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, something UW never did under Dick Bennett, and an Elite Eight team, the only area in which Bennett did better — make Ryan arguably the best coach UW has ever had. (It is interesting to note, though, that the UW Athletic Department was pushing season tickets into the regular season.)

Ryan is an example of the value of old sportswriters. Sports commentators working today assume that Wisconsin has always played a glacially slow style of basketball, dating back before Ryan to Bennett. Few probably realize that when Ryan was the coach at UW–Platteville, his teams tried to run and press their opponents out of the gym; in fact, UWP once led Division III in scoring under Ryan. Today’s sportswriters are too dense to realize that maybe Ryan’s offensive style is based on Ryan’s conclusions based on available talent within the state of Wisconsin.

Adding more hate, if you want to call it that, is Awful Announcing:

Tuesday night CBS Sports Network Debbie Antonelli went the extra mile to try and help viewers at home watching Rutgers-Syracuse.  The score at the half was 19-15 Rutgers as both teams combined to shoot 22.2% from the field.  Antonelli left the booth and went to the scorers table to try and select a new game ball and change the offensive luck of both teams. …

If only we could get whoever’s calling the next Wisconsin game to try this …

I’ve watched, covered and announced games of every conceivable tempo. I admit to preferring a faster pace, having covered the fastest-paced team of all, Grinnell College. It’s not that every game needs to be played at Grinnell’s insane pace, though. There are high-quality deliberate-paced games. There are also deliberate-paced games that are boring to watch, and there seem to be an increasing number of those kinds of games.

We know how the most successful sport, pro football, would handle this. The National Football League will tinker with its rules whenever the league feels it’s necessary to stoke fan interest, usually toward more offense. Today’s NFL game ties back to 1978, when the league liberalized what offensive linemen could do and restricted what defensive backs could do. The NFL realizes that sports is entertainment, and non-entertained fans don’t buy tickets and don’t spend money at the stadium.

College sports is entertainment too, whether or not the NCAA wants to admit that. Sportswriter complaints shouldn’t be the impetus for NCAA rule changes. Dropping TV ratings and diminishing attendance should be the impetus for NCAA rule changes. Fewer eyeballs watching games, in person or on TV, will ultimately mean less financial windfall for the NCAA.

Perhaps the most effective way (as the excellent sports editor of The Platteville Journal pointed out) to improve scoring has nothing to do with, as has been suggested elsewhere, the distance of the three-point line or the length of the shot clock. (Scoring now is below where it was in the days before the three-point shot and the shot clock, which demonstrates that coaches and players adjust to rules changes.) It doesn’t have to do with the lane, either, even though I’ve previously proposed the international lane, which trapezoid shape might make camping in the lane more difficult for offensive players.

It has to do with the officials’ calling the game as it is meant to be played, as opposed to how it’s played now.

What does watching old NCAA basketball demonstrate? It demonstrates how the game is supposed to be officiated. Playing inside shouldn’t reach contact levels consistent with charges for battery. Touching the player with the ball should be a foul. Contact should mean fouls. Not only would calling fouls mean more points directly (assuming players started practicing free throws again), it would mean changes in defensive approaches away from today’s no-autopsy no-foul strategy.

Coaches are not dumb. If officials called the correct fouls, coaches who played excessively physical styles would lose games. (This means you, Tom Izzo!) They would either adjust or get fired (because their teams lost and fans stopped showing up) and would have to find jobs as football defensive assistant coaches.

After a hiatus of slightly less than a year, I will be back broadcasting high school basketball tonight and Tuesday.

I am doing the boys basketball game between Southwestern, ranked 10th in Division 4 according to the Wisconsin Sports Network, and Cuba City, ranked number one in Division 4. The Cubans’ last loss was the WIAA Division 4 final last year.

Then, on Tuesday, I will be doing the Division 5 regional quarterfinal game between Benton and Potosi. Both games can be heard online at wglr.com (look for Sports Streams).

Both games represent trips in my wayback machine. In my rural newspaper past (as opposed to my rural newspaper present), I was half-owner and editor of the Tri-County Press in Cuba City, which covered the Cuba City, Southwestern and Benton school districts. The Cuba City boys basketball coach was Jerry Petitgoue, one of the winningest coaches in the state. The boys basketball coach is still Jerry Petitgoue, the winningest boys basketball coach in the state. (The Cuba City High School gym is named for him.) He and I were two of the founding members of the City of Presidents Committee, the nation’s longest running bicentennial project.

As for Tuesday’s game, Potosi’s coach is Mike Uppena, formerly a three-year starter for Potosi’s archrival, Cassville. Mike is the son of Dennis Uppena, Cassville’s coach, who has won three state titles in Cassville, with a few state trips, the first including Mike, added in. The first year I encountered Dennis and Mike (and Mike’s older brother, Mark, who coached boys basketball at Lancaster and is now a principal) was 1988, my first year in the work world.

I started my as-needed return to radio last Saturday at the Boscobel Division 3 wrestling regional. (The radio station set it up in great fashion — it covered three regionals, with half an hour at each, starting at 10 a.m. and running until I finally shut up slightly after 5 p.m.) Boscobel is my mother’s alma mater. To think I was calling sports where my mother used to hang out was weird — as weird as when I was announcing basketball games at the old Richland Center High School and its former football field, Krouskop Park, where my father used to hang out.

And now, via Facebook and Twitter, the best comments on the third-quarter power outage in Super Bowl XLVII (the headline was my contribution):

New Orleans Power & Light just got back at Roger Goodell.

This is evident testimony of a lights-out performance by the Ravens tonight.

Just play, pretend you’re outside and clouds are covering the sun! Geez!

Looks like Ray Nagin ran off with the power bill money.

I wonder if they will blame Bush for the lights going out since Katrina hit New Orleans?

Don’t worry. The last time the power went out New Orleans they had back on in four weeks.

I’ll bet Al Gore had something to do with this!

I’d rather be watching the Go Daddy commercial over and over again than listening to these knuckleheads.

Guess the NFL shouldn’t have held the Super bowl in New Orleans the same year they suspended Saints’s coach Sean Payton.

Clark Griswold: Sorry just testing my 2013 Christmas lights display!

As the lights start to come back on, I can see about 20 cans of Deer Antler spray laying around the Ravens’ sideline.

Oh Oh…. Lights out, lots of drunk people, limo’s parked outside…. SOMEBODY KEEP THEIR EYE ON LEWIS !!!

@OnionSports: Superdome lights return as all 53 49ers are lying motionless on ground. Whereabouts of Ray Lewis unknown

This wouldn’t have happened on Fox

if the lights are gonna be out and we have to watch nothing plus commercials, at least break the monotony with a 100 yard mascot dash or something… holy hell NFL

Just talked to my cousin the Sports Mechanic, (fixes games) Chinny, Cup o Vino and he said he had the power outage and points.

Somewhere Don Meredith is smiling!

Thinks its like Christmas lights? One goes out and the whole strand is shot!

Get Tulane stadium ready! Or Tiger Stadium [presumably LSU's]

We’re down to mood lighting in here. Sexiest third quarter ever.

Gee Thanks Obama for shutting the Coal plant down in New Orleans…. How is that working out for New Orleans right now?

“Just kidding!”

Why couldn’t the power fail about 20 minutes ago?

Alright…which Beyonce hater cut the power at the Super Dome? You’re a few minutes too late, buddy.

Too bad it didn’t happen when Beyonce was singing.

Terrorist attack that was half successful? At least the press booth was knocked out.

Did they lose power in the booth, too? YAY!! #dreamscometrue

That’s what they get for having a Super Bowl without the Packers!

Next year’s super bowl will be outdoors in New Jersey. That could be a disaster