Not that interested in the game itself? Here’s some context for how the game intersects with race, advertising and globalization.

Far Away, Super Bowl’s Losers Will Be Champs: “In some parts of the world, the Seattle Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Buffalo Bills are the last great football dynasty and Tom Brady is some frustrated quarterback from New England who can never win it all. So say the T-shirts and the caps worn in Niger, Uganda and Sierra Leone,” writes Lee Jenkins in The New York Times.

Jenkins explains what happens to the official t-shirts and caps designed well in advance that proclaim the losing team the winner. The system involved for keeping those items off television and eBay — and getting them to people who don’t “even know about football” — is quite interesting.

Super Bowl Games Vs. Commercials: Peter Hartlaub of the San Fransisco Chronicle put together a 10-year scorecard of memorable commercials and wonders whether we’ve “reached the point where commercials have become more entertaining than the sporting event that surrounds them.”

Advertising Age’s full coverage of Super Bowl advertising is available here. If you feel compelled to vote, there’s SuperBowl-ads.com. You can even skip the game and catch just the commercials at CBS.

Dungy, Smith on Verge of Milestone for Sports, Society: Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist Terrence Moore poses the question “What’s the significance” of Lovie Smith and Tom Dungy being the “first head coaches darker than Vince Lombardi to juggle X’s with O’s during a Super Bowl” to an interesting mix of people, including feminist activist Martha Burk, news anchor Tom Brokaw and Sharon Robinson, daughter of Jackie Robinson.

But first Moore offers his response:

My answer begins and ends with the late Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, the NFL prognosticator and unofficial sociologist for CBS. He was fired by the network 19 years ago after his infamous television interview with a local Washington D.C. station. What you probably know is that he said blacks were bred to become great athletes courtesy of their big-boned maternal ancestors from slavery. What you probably don’t know is that he also said something else — something that was buried by the media. Something that tells you why the presence of African-Americans Smith and Dungy on the sideline next Sunday in Miami at Dolphin Stadium will have even more significance than you think.

Said Snyder in that interview on why he thought NFL teams weren’t hiring blacks as coaches: “There’s not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean, all the players are black. The only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs.”

In other words, Snyder broke ranks with those in the shadows to expose an unspoken truth regarding discrimination: It’s mostly about power. It isn’t about believing that blacks haven’t the “necessities,” as the late Al Campanis once theorized on national television. It’s about fearing that blacks actually can do nearly anything and seeking ways through the good ol’ boy network (or beyond) to stop it.

By the way, I just heard Michael Wilbon’s commentary during halftime of today’s Pistons-Cavaliers game, and he mentioned that the first NBA championship game to feature two black coaches in the finals took place 32 years ago. And the NBA has been far ahead of the NFL with the percentage of general managers and owners. Wilbon wrote more about race and coaching last month in this Washington Post column.

On a Day of Diversity, Let’s Not Forget Flores: With so much media coverage focused on Dungy and Smith, John P. Lopez of the Houston Chronicle wonders why former Oakland Raiders coach and general manager Tom Flores, who 26 years ago became the first Hispanic coach to take a team to a Super Bowl, is not remembered for crashing the gates. Lopez writes:

In the official NFL Web recap of that 27-10 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, Flores’ name is not mentioned.

Flores went on to win another Super Bowl, as well as become the first Hispanic NFL general manager and first Hispanic NFL club president.

Flores’ starting quarterback in Super Bowl XV was Jim Plunkett, who was the first Hispanic quarterback to play in and win a Super Bowl, throwing for three touchdowns and 261 yards.

So how many questions did Flores and Plunkett get about their pioneering Super Bowl feat 26 years ago?

“None,” Flores said. “Not one question that I can remember.”

Among Hispanics, N.F.L. Mania Hits Cultural Wall: “In Spanish-speaking households in this country, which account for roughly 10 percent of the population, the N.F.L. is out of sight, out of mind, lagging far behind soccer, boxing, baseball, basketball and other sports in popularity, according to a study commissioned in December by ESPN Deportes, the Spanish-language arm of ESPN in the United States,” writes John Branch in The New York Times.

“That could have long-term consequences for the N.F.L., which has grown accustomed to unbridled growth. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the United States, and they account for one of every two people added to the population through immigration and birth.”