the greatness that is the Purple One.

Prince put on the best halftime show that I can remember watching at a Super Bowl. Some of you may disagree, but I think the testament to his genius is turning sub-par Foo Fighters songs into compelling live viewing. Plus, ending the show with "Purple Rain" just deepened the man-crush.

I wish he'd played more of his oldies but goodies, but his finding Jesus caused him to put some of his back catalog on ice for good. "Kiss" would have been nice, but I can't slam him for putting on a guitar extravaganza, showing the newer folks how it's supposed to be done.

Mark-ass marks like SI's Peter King and Rick Reilly can take their hating and shove it.

Also, I would like to note my favorite of the crappy Super Bowl ads this year.

I almost expected molester-stache dude to yell "IT'S MORPHIN' TIME!" when he put the GPS to his belt -- that plus faux-power metal music put it over the top in my mind.

boring? really?

I know the Super Bowl wasn't the most visually exciting spectacle and a turnover-laden fest, but I'm not sure where people are getting that the Colts' victory was crappy, boring, or dull. I mean, call me nuts if you watched the game and thought "boring", but anyone used to watching the Bears' offense all season knew they could be absolute shite based on how Grossman was playing, yet maybe put it together and pull it out. That game wasn't really completely over until the fourth quarter, and most of the time, that's all you can ask of a Super Bowl; that it not be a Bucs over Raiders style blowout.

I would accept that my viewing experience probably colored the boring part; I may not be thinking solely of the game, and Devin Hester's kickoff TD may have set the bar too high for excitement. We were needling the Colts fan in our group throughout the game with chants of "Peyton is a pussy!" while watching the Sex Cannon fall apart throughout the game.

However, I think we can all agree that the commercial quality was low this year.

oh, right; they're playing a game this weekend.

Bears over Colts, 24-20, mostly because I think defense and special teams wins these games, and the Bears are better on both. Peyton will have a good game -- but the Bears will run well, Rex will make the downfield throw when he needs to, and Robbie Gould, while not playoff clutch like Vinatieri, has been damn close to automatic.

Now that I've written this, given my record on this year's playoffs, Indy fans should be happy. Whatever. Let's get to the link fest:

1) Leave the Man Alone looks at the "black coach" factor.
2) Pacifist Viking tries to determine what's in a name, specifically Troy Polamalu's.
3) Just because I've not written about Barbaro doesn't mean others haven't -- the Mighty MJD has the funniest take.
4) One More Dying Quail digs into the details of hitting .400.
5) True Hoop predicts coach Eric Musselman getting busted for DUI signals some serious problems for the Sacramento Kings.
6) Rich Kotite Banged Your Mom happened to get ahold of a letter from Tom Brady to Rex Grossman, and let's just say Dreamboat disapproves of Rextasy's other nickname of "Sex Cannon."
7) The Big Picture is hitting its two best features lately, interviewing Deadspin's Will Leitch and posing whether its readers find CBS' Sam Ryan attractive.

I'll make this meta #2 as well -- anything you few readers out there would like to see more of from me? Say so. The posting might be better and more frequent -- I'm officially now off the graveyard shift at work. I'll also thank you for reading, and thank the big grown-ups at Deadspin, the Big Lead, and Mr. Irrelevant for linking and/or accepting my blogwhoring lately.

Tony Dungy has a theory.

I had ESPNews on in the background earlier today and was listening to the various press conferences when Tony Dungy took one of the usual questions about him and Lovie Smith being black coaches in the Super Bowl. With the usual discussions of the Rooney Rule that come each offseason, his response about opening doors was good. He said it helped open doors for different types of coaches, not just black coaches overall.

Dungy said (to paraphrase) that the possible reason that it took a long time for a coach like him to get here was because the image of a coach in the owner's mind for ages (and when you see the coach on NFL Films) is always in the Vince Lombardi mode: old, ornery, loud, and white (again, I'm summarizing). And neither Dungy nor Smith are that type of coach who get after players in a hectoring fashion if they fuck up. The last versions of that kind of coach just retired (Parcells, and to some extent, Cowher), although acolytes (Payton and Belichick, especially) still do that sort of thing every so often (observe Payton after Reggie Bush taunted Urlacher in the NFC championship.) I found folks hinting at this before in the off-season youth hiring movement; moving to more of a "player-friendly" coach style that NBA teams do all the time.