By MIKE BELL -- Calgary Sun
 There is no such thing as halfway when it comes to the NFL showcasing its championship game.

 This year, though, with the help of an overzealous CBS who enlisted their sister company MTV, they managed to outdo themselves.

 Beginning on Saturday night --and not even including the news and sports coverage -- the American network had more than seven hours preceding last night's Tampa Bay clash between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens. Seven hours. And not necessarily good ones.

 Things got under way with an hour-long special called Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials, hosted by Anthony Clark and Michael O'Malley from the CBS (surprise, surprise) comedy (we'll take their word for it) Yes, Dear.

 It was a notable hour, if only for the opportunity to get up-close and personal with Budweiser's Whassup guys. (For the record, I actually spent less time wondering how to spell 'whassup' than I did the word `hackneyed.')

 After that came Ricky Martin's Super Bowl Saturday Night, because, I guess, nothing truly gets a football fan pumped and primed for the big game like an ambi-sexual Latino male with a hyperactive pelvis.

 Game-day coverage kicked off four-and-a-half hours before kickoff.

 Wow. There's nothing quite like seeing the same human interest stories that every media outlet had run in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl packaged up with dramatic John Tesh music.

 Here's the thing: I care even less about Kerry Collins' battle with the bottle than I do about what Tony Siragusa thinks. (Yeah, put another microphone in front of that fat, boorish moron. "Oh, but he's so real!" Invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner and we'll see how charming that realness is.)

 And when they weren't running those stories, the colour men were doing their best to make anyone who still wanted to watch the game, not want to watch the game by painting punters' duel scenarios. I heard the word defence less in George Bush's campaign for the presidency than I did in the Super Bowl preview.

 After that, finally, blissfully, magically came the game itself -- not a classic, but not the yawner that was predicted -- which is where CBS shone. The game, when all is said and done, is why you endure all of the other garbage and the network's coverage was faultless.

 The play-by-play, the camera work and the sound (the unbelievable hits sounded as though they came from a Hollywood effects lot) were as perfect as live sports telecasts get.

 While it was entirely underused, even the Gap commercial cam (i.e. Eyevision) was a cool addition to the coverage and actually (gasp!) provided some insight into how some of the big plays unfolded. Window-dressing, yes, but good-looking window-dressing nonetheless.

 As for the MTV-produced halftime show, which out of courtesy I've left for last, the morphine has kicked in and I'm now able to comment.

 Let's put aside the fact that by including acts such as *N Sync and Britney Spears (pubescent girls everywhere are right now stealing their brothers' smelly sweatsocks for bracelets), they missed the game's target market.

 Let's also put aside the fact the screaming fans surrounding the stage made it seem like organizers had bussed in a mall's food court.

 Let's put all of that over there and leave it with one final thought: If Steven Tyler has any self-respect left in that ghoulish emaciated corpse of his, the front page of this newspaper will feature the headline "Shamed Aerosmith performer packs it in."