Everyone has been calling Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday for so long, it’s almost true.  It’s great because everyone can play, no matter your religion, or even if you don’t like football.

So, it’s time to break it all down, Coach Bacon style, starting with the most important element: The ads.  This year broke another record: $4.5 million for a single spot.

For that kinda dough, you better not waste a second – but they wasted whole minutes.

To celebrate the spirit the Super Bowl represents, the ad makers’ theme this year was depressingly serious, dysfunctional relationships — and death.  This is how we got dads who drove race cars instead of raising their sons, and saw a heartwarming story about a cute little kid who won’t be able to get cooties or learn to ride a bike – because, well, he’s dead.

That was Nationwide Insurance’s friendly way of letting us know that accidents happen, and they can be fatal, even for cute little kids.

What the heck?  This is a national holiday!  I take global warming seriously, too – but not on Super Sunday.

One of the best ads, I thought, was Honda’s.  It had no pyrotechnics, cutting edge computer graphics, or famous actors.  No, they talked about their car, and why you might like it — that’s all.  But they didn’t mention a deadbeat dad or a dead kid – so, by default, they win.

Of course, perhaps it all makes sense when you consider the deadly serious two-week lead up to this year’s Super Bowl, which was even worse than usual.  This year’s cause celebre was “DeflateGate”: the never-ending investigation of the New England Patriots’ balls, and if they were big enough.

After the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that brought us Watergate, various brilliant members of the fourth estate determined that, just maybe, the footballs Tom Brady uses were just a little deflated – from the perfectly fine 12.5 pounds per square inch to the possibly lethal 11.5 pounds per square inch.  And it’s just possible Brady deflated them intentionally.  Or he had the ball boy do it, during a 90-second trip to the bathroom, all caught on tape.  Or the ball boy was just going to the bathroom.  We’re not sure.  But we’re certain this is very serious stuff!

They reported that 11 of the 12 footballs Brady used in the first half against Indianapolis in the Conference Final two weeks earlier were slightly underinflated.  The Patriots lead 17-7.  But in the second half, when the NFL forced them to use Certified Regulation Inflated Balls, the Patriots outscored Indy 28-0.  So you can see the tremendous advantage Brady gained.

If you woke the NFL up at 3 a.m., the NFL would admit that it doesn’t care about this either.  If it did, it would have kept track of all everyone’s balls, and made all teams use the same ones.  But it doesn’t.  It lets both teams hold their own balls, and do whatever it likes with them, within reason.  But now the NFL has to care, because a few reporters say so.

Given the NFL’s track record for Big Investigations under beleaguered commissioner Roger Goodell, I predict the NFL’s Big Report will show the NFL has never heard of Ray Rice, his wife, the video tape, or convicted felon and NFL Hall of Famer Ray Lewis, who co-hosted the Super Bowl broadcast.   Oh, and, what footballs?

I can’t recall something so insignificant getting so much attention.  Deflategate is the Left Shark of football scandals.

Speaking of which, didja catch that Left Shark?

I don’t think anyone or anything — not Tom Brady, his super model wife, or his allegedly deflated balls – got as much attention as the Left Shark.  What did the Left Shark do?  During the endless half-time show, he stood to the left of Katy Perry, on the kind of feet sharks don’t usually have, while the shark on the right was dancing. As for the shark on the left, we’re still not sure exactly what he was doing, but whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t the same thing as the shark on the right.

I think the Left Shark, inside the costume, might have been on fire, and was waving for help.  Perhaps Left Shark’s balls were deflating, and he was simply trying to draw attention to this fact.  Or, just possibly, the Left Shark was an actual shark, gasping for water.

You might say all this is so much Super Bowl silliness, and you’d be right. And the NFL should be grateful for it, because if it wasn’t for Tom Brady’s allegedly illegally grippable balls, or the Left Shark’s Attack of Nerves Unrelated to Dancing, we’d be talking about a genuine domestic violence epidemic among NFL players, or the seriousness of concussions going undiagnosed – including in the Super Bowl game itself.  Or we’d be talking about the NFL being the only major league that doesn’t provide players guaranteed contracts — which is one reason two-thirds of them are broke when they retire.  Or we’d talk about NFL teams receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money for shiny new stadiums, while the league itself is registered as a non-profit organization that does not have to pay taxes.

And perhaps it’s a good thing we weren’t talking about all that.  If we did, Super Sunday would be as depressing as a Nationwide Ad.

And who’d want to watch that?

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Please join the conversation, but remember: I run only those letters from those who are not profane or insane, and who include their FULL name. 

Radio stuff: On Friday mornings, these commentaries run at 8:50 on Michigan Radio (91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit and Flint, and 104.1 Grand Rapids), and a few minutes later,  I join Sam Webb and Ira Weintraub LIVE from 9:05 to 9:25 on WTKA.com, 1050 AM.

After 12 years, I’m handing over my “Off the Field” hour on WTKA to my good friend Jamie Morris, who is launching his new two-hour show, “A View From the Backfield.”

This gives me the time I need to join Michigan Radio’s great Cynthia Canty on her afternoon Stateside show every Thursday for a few minutes.  Check it out!

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