Vox - Super Bowl 2016: Carolina Panthers vs. Denver Broncoshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2019-01-30T16:54:13-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/106803432019-01-30T16:54:13-05:002019-01-30T16:54:13-05:00The NFL's virtual first-down line, explained
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<p>At this point, it’s hard to imagine watching football without the yellow line.</p> <p id="s4f7kf">Sports broadcasts are wallpapered with gratuitous graphics. They’re moving, they’re shiny, they sound like Transformers. Take them or leave them, the experience of watching football doesn’t really change.</p>
<p id="cGSZEk">With one exception: The yellow first-down line. Since the late 1990s, the <a href="https://www.sportvision.com/football/1st-ten%C2%AE-graphics"><strong>virtual yellow line</strong></a><strong> </strong>has been quietly enhancing football broadcasts by giving viewers a live, intuitive guide to the state of play. The graphic is engineered to appear painted on the field, rather than simply plopped on top of the players, so it doesn’t distract from the game at all.</p>
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<cite>ESPN</cite>
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<p id="SkSGv4">The line debuted during a September 27, 1998, game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was developed by a company called Sportvision Inc. and operated by six people in a 48-foot semi-truck parked outside the stadium. J.R. Gloudemans, one of Sportvision’s founding engineers, recalled the early days of the yellow line in an <a href="http://ethw.org/First-Hand:My_Recollections:_Development_of_Football%27s_Virtual_First_Down_Line"><strong>interview</strong></a><strong> </strong>with the Engineering and Technology History Wiki:</p>
<blockquote><p id="JEqUun">We got lucky the first season because we only did night games (ESPN Sunday Night Football) so the lighting was consistent. Snow and rain caused problems and on one occasion, there was torrential downpour at a Kansas City game.… Another tough stadium was Candlestick in San Francisco. The Niners wear that sort of brownish pants. Back then when baseball was also played on that field, the dirt from the infield was a close color match to the uniforms. So keying in those circumstances was very tricky.</p></blockquote>
<p id="Rjr16d">(To understand how dirt and weather affect the yellow line, check out the video above.)</p>
<p id="XZTXvO"><a href="http://www.si.com/nfl/2013/07/18/nfl-birth-yellow-line"><strong>ESPN</strong></a> was the only network that immediately agreed to pay the steep price of $25,000 per game. Before long, <a href="http://www.jurisnotes.com/Cases/sportvision.pdf"><strong>other companies</strong></a> began offering the yellow line to the other networks, and now you won’t see a football game without it.</p>
<p id="287fX1">In fact, when Fox Sports tried to save money by cutting the line from its broadcasts 15 years ago, there was an outcry from fans. Sportvision set up a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20020109021758/http://www.lovetheline.com/display.asp?first=279"><strong>website</strong></a> for comments (available now thanks to the WaybackMachine):</p>
<blockquote><p id="FVEzyW">10/22/01 10:34:53 AM -- Bonnie: Lose the fancy broadcast desks, the fake field floor, the flying statistic graphics and the sound effects and bring back the line! ... $1,000,000 / a year? Come on - what’s that? One more Superbowl ad? I’d be willing to watch another one and make the game another minute longer to save the line.</p></blockquote>
<p id="nqd9Tf">About a month later, Fox brought back the line, having found a sponsor (Intel) to cover the cost.</p>
<p id="Vj0nn4">You can find this video and all of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA"><strong>Vox’s videos on YouTube</strong></a>. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can <a href="https://www.vox.com/join"><strong>become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube</strong></a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/6/10919538/nfl-yellow-first-down-line-espnJoss FongEstelle CaswellGina Barton2018-02-02T12:52:42-05:002018-02-02T12:52:42-05:0025 Super Bowl commercials that explain Super Bowl commercials
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<figcaption>Volkswagen</figcaption>
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<p>Celebrity cameos, patriotism, and nostalgia abound.</p> <p id="ZFCM5U">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/super-bowl">Super Bowl</a> dominates the list of the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/5/10921574/super-bowl-ratings">most-watched programs in American television history</a>, routinely drawing more than 100 million total viewers — even in the current era, where shows that attract more than 10 million are considered smash hits.</p>
<p id="Ne3x2A">The mania for all things related to the NFL's annual championship game spreads beyond game day. Sports news channels offer round-the-clock coverage of every pregame interview and workout. The NFL’s own cable network runs marathons of past Super Bowl highlights. Entertainment media speculates about what the halftime show will entail. And seemingly everyone — from casual fans to the New York Times — <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/super-bowl-commercials">talks about the commercials</a>.</p>
<p id="2ajIgo">The whole notion of "the Super Bowl commercial" as something eagerly awaited and much debated really arose in the 1990s, when the rise of the internet allowed for more instantaneous shared reactions to what happens on television. Once advertisers and the media realized that people at Super Bowl parties weren’t going to the bathroom or hitting the snack table during timeouts, they started working together to nurture an unexpectedly captive audience. Today, the agencies that produce the ad spots put out press releases and sneak previews of what viewers can expect to see on Sunday, while websites everywhere scramble after the game to post <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/2/5/14517108/super-bowl-commercials-2017s-winners-and-losers">rankings of the best and worst</a>.</p>
<p id="ZWos4d">It’s all a way of maximizing the value of work that routinely costs millions of dollars to produce. And that’s before paying what Quartz <a href="https://qz.com/1192015/super-bowl-lii-how-the-price-of-an-ad-climbed-to-5-milion-in-2018/">estimates</a> to be more than $5 million per 30 seconds airtime.</p>
<p id="YzI9Pz">Observed from a distance, the modern Super Bowl commercial is a bizarre example of a consumerist culture run amok. But on a micro level, the evolution of these ads — and of the attention we pay to them — says a lot about how American business and entertainment have changed. Everything from advances in special effects to variations in gender politics and an increasingly polarized America can be traced via what airs on TV between touchdowns.</p>
<p id="EvEelB">That's why the following list, arranged roughly chronologically, doesn’t try to name the <em>best</em><em> </em>Super Bowl commercials of all time (although some of the ads I've included definitely qualify). Instead, these are the ones that best represent the trends and subcategories that have defined a phenomenon.</p>
<h3 id="geCXGc">1. Master Lock, "Rifle" (1974): the first perennial</h3>
<div id="0Eelrc"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-HvOhO8f0wc?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="R3Nfx4">Advertising is designed to be noticed, which means that long before Super Bowl Sunday became the preeminent showcase for new commercials, the big game featured plenty of spots that grabbed viewers’ attention and sparked, "Hey did you see that?" chitchat around the office on Monday. The first seriously buzzy ad ran in 1974, when Master Lock took a cue from <a href="https://youtu.be/esHroPbYUwc"><strong>Timex</strong></a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/8C-e96m4730"><strong>American Tourister</strong></a> and filmed a demonstration of how durable its product could be. The spectacular stunt — firing a rifle at a lock, which remained closed — went over so well that the company repeated it, with different variations, in the Super Bowls that followed. Each new Master Lock commercial became an annual event in and of itself.</p>
<h3 id="mVY9iA">2. Coca-Cola, "Hey, kid, catch!" (1980): the game boosts an existing ad’s profile</h3>
<div id="vZgim1"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PniKOseu8tI?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="xJKZha">As anyone who watched <em>Mad Men</em> knows, the McCann Erickson ad agency <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8589783/mad-men-finale-predictions"><strong>had a longstanding relationship with the Coca-Cola Company</strong></a>, crafting TV commercials that are now as much a part of American pop culture history as Elvis Presley, Marvel Comics, or Coke itself. One of the best of the bunch is this Clio-winning spot, which shows hulking, injured Pittsburgh Steeler "Mean" Joe Greene softening after a game when a young boy gives him a bottle of pop.</p>
<p id="w0KhEx">The touching "Hey, kid, catch!" ad actually started airing in October 1979, but the exposure it got from Super Bowl 14 turned it into a touchstone, provoking several parodies and homages. Something similar would happen two decades later, when Budweiser’s infectious, funny <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxM&feature=youtu.be"><strong>"Whassup?"</strong></a> ad launched months before the Super Bowl and then exploded in the culture once it aired during the game.</p>
<h3 id="riy3Kh">3. Apple, "1984" (1984): advertising as art</h3>
<div id="TN1n2S"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2zfqw8nhUwA?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="QTaKrc">Perhaps the most famous Super Bowl commercial of all time, this oblique pitch for the then-new Macintosh personal computer was groundbreaking for multiple reasons. The enormous scale of the production, overseen by <em>Alien </em>and <em>Blade Runner </em>director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000631/"><strong>Ridley Scott</strong></a>, was unprecedented — as was the fact that the ad doesn’t really show the product in question or explain what it does. In the previous decade, the model for a great commercial was Xerox’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgH2M02xek&feature=youtu.be"><strong>"Monks,"</strong></a> which employed humor and elaborate production design to illustrate the advantages of using a copy machine. Apple and the agency Chiat/Day demonstrated that artistry alone was enough to become a nationwide conversation piece … even though, ultimately, the "1984" campaign didn’t sell a lot of Macs.</p>
<h3 id="P9UgU3">4. Budweiser, "Bud Bowl" (1989): recurring schtick</h3>
<div id="iUknMH"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/47SMBrviAO8?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="UjMgwN">In 1989, Budweiser and the agency D'arcy Masius Benton & Bowles animated cans and bottles to create a cute, amusing fake football game between Bud and Bud Light, which ran in pieces throughout Super Bowl 23. The concept was so delightful and engaging that it demanded a sequel, and throughout the '90s Anheuser-Busch kept bringing back the Bud Bowl, adding more and more elements until the whole game-within-the-game started to get too gimmicky — and eventually more irritating than fun. The rise and fall of the Bud Bowl is a cautionary tale that Budweiser itself doesn’t seem to have heeded, given that the company would later run another good gag into the ground, turning its clever <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TTWtbT088&feature=youtu.be"><strong>"Frogs"</strong></a>campaign into an annual Super Bowl nuisance.</p>
<h3 id="acvBGH">5. Nike, "Hare Jordan" (1992), and 6. McDonald’s, "Showdown" (1993): the ultimate sportsman/spokesperson</h3>
<div id="KcAL4R"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sc61UtYUgbs?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<div id="s0k4LW"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fgo8pJnKquE?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="eHgRqV">Major brands have long turned to jocks to be their spokespeople for Super Bowl commercials, given that the TV audience for the game is made up primarily of sports fans. In the early 1990s, Michael Jordan was the athlete that nearly every company wanted to partner with, which meant that during any given Super Bowl Sunday, an NBA player might get just as much airtime as the best of the NFL.</p>
<p id="xsJd52">The two best-known ads from Jordan’s heyday aired in consecutive years. Director Joe Pytka — who’s helmed more than 80 spots that aired during the Super Bowl — did such a good job matching the Chicago Bulls superstar with Bugs Bunny in 1992's "Hare Jordan" that Warner Bros. would later hire him to make the feature film that spun out of that commercial, <em>Space Jam</em>. One year later, Pytka worked with Jordan again for the charming "Showdown," which pitted His Airness against Larry Bird in an increasingly elaborate game of HORSE, with a Big Mac at stake. The McDonald’s ad didn’t get expanded into a movie, but it’s still one of the best-remembered of Jordan's Super Bowl commercials, and one that confirms how a champion’s charisma can convert easily into salesmanship.</p>
<h3 id="lW6j3c">7.<em> Independence Day</em> teaser (1996): the modern movie hype machine is born</h3>
<div id="T58Kgm"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7pIfHBz-Z4g?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="2nl9v3">These days, Super Bowl ad breaks are littered with short trailers for upcoming blockbusters, but Hollywood largely steered clear of the game until 1996, when 20th Century Fox cut together 30 seconds of its most eye-popping footage from <em>Independence Day </em>— a movie that hadn’t yet been completed, and that wouldn’t premiere until a little more than five months later. <em>Independence Day</em> was a largely unknown quantity prior to Super Bowl 30, but after its teaser aired during the game it became a must-see — and set a precedent for way-early hype that film studios have chased ever since.</p>
<h3 id="dr8LIc">8. Bud Light, "Shopping" (1998): casual misogyny reigns</h3>
<div id="Laqa5c"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M_7xRaNY8wY?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="yV6bzZ">Despite some pundits' sexist perspective that guys watch the game and gals watch the ads, advertisers haven’t always made their commercials female-friendly. Super Bowls have often been marred by varying degrees of shameless misogyny, with women <a href="https://youtu.be/7DZao4kN73M"><strong>having their clothes blown off</strong></a> or <a href="https://youtu.be/fRYzYAfGzjA"><strong>getting doused with beer</strong></a>. More often, ladies are just depicted as a total drag, forcing their fellas to spend time with them doing boring stuff like shopping.</p>
<h3 id="uj16YQ">9. FedEx, "We Apologize" (1998): introducing "the anti-ad"</h3>
<div id="SsEWwU"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K1qwjx6xUtU?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="wWOumA">As Super Bowl commercials have become a bigger and bigger deal, they’ve also started to become self-aware, with advertisers poking fun at the overall hubbub and their own clichés. One of the most enjoyable of the "anti-ads" is this sly FedEx spot from 1998, an early example of the form,<strong> </strong>which pretends to be an apology from the company explaining that it didn’t get its commercial to NBC on time because its ad agency used the wrong shipping service. (In these days of digital delivery, the only kind of company that could do a gag like this would be an internet service provider.)</p>
<p id="V8OgCf">"We Apologize" is notable because its static image and lack of music immediately stood out from the flash and noise of the ads around it. But it’s also an example of how advertisers have been figuring out ways to get their message across even when viewers are taping a program and fast-forwarding through the breaks. In 1998, it was a VCR buster. Today, it’d be getting through to folks with DVRs.</p>
<h3 id="34nk0A">10. Monster.com, "When I Grow Up" (1999), and 11. E-Trade, "Ghost Town" (2001): the dot-com boom ... and bust</h3>
<div id="HCGeVY"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rJB0CzlzSwY?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<div id="tv7S8A"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ONZFkqzuMjI?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="3Lctye">Monster.com wasn’t the first web-based service to advertise during the Super Bowl, but its "When I Grow Up" ad was so clever — explaining what the company actually does by having kids sarcastically talk about the crappy jobs they one day hoped to have — that it became one of the most talked-about commercials of that year, and set the stage for what came to be known as "the dot-com Bowl." In 2000, more than a dozen websites bought time during the game, from Pets.com to LastMinuteTravel.com. And many of them were out of business by 2001, when E-Trade’s "Ghost Town" openly mocked the carnage.</p>
<p id="lee5nP">Websites still spend money on Super Bowl Sunday, and have produced some of the game’s most memorable moments of the past decade, thanks to the <a href="https://youtu.be/hashPaU7Dpk"><strong>E-Trade Baby</strong></a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/3FKkYnVSsV8"><strong>GoDaddy’s parade of prurience</strong></a>. But the boom in dot-com ads hit the same year that Silicon Valley went bust.</p>
<h3 id="DJ3O4X">12. Levi’s, "Crazy Legs" (2002): directors as stars</h3>
<div id="YJP2Il"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_wxiggZ2JRQ?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="L73dEL">Many of the most creative movie directors working today have either moonlighted in advertising or got their start working on commercials. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005069/"><strong>Spike Jonze</strong></a> shot music videos and ads years before he made his feature film debut with the 1999 cult hit <em>Being John Malkovich</em>, and he continued doing so for a few years afterward, bringing his sense of the absurd to spots like this one for Levi’s, which shows street dancer Johnny Cervin freaking out his fellow pedestrians with the wild things his lower body can do. The best of Jonze’s generation have followed in the footsteps of directors like the aforementioned Ridley Scott, proving that advertising can be art.</p>
<h3 id="6ZV05A">13. Pepsi, "Hendrix" (2004), and 14. Volkswagen, "The Force" (2011): cross-branding and nostalgia</h3>
<div id="gmvH5V"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fx08gQ3XyQM?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<div id="fDqWqr"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i-PNHZvKtZo?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="lYDZgz">There are two constants during the game, year after year: Pepsi will take jabs at Coke, and companies of all kinds will try to associate themselves with other brands people like, be they <a href="https://youtu.be/NYSqiD1_TCg"><strong>Superman</strong></a> or <a href="https://youtu.be/z1Kk_zB5fRo"><em><strong>The Simpsons</strong></em></a>. Pepsi hit both marks simultaneously with a 2004 commercial that features a young Jimi Hendrix picking Pepsi over Coke, and the electric guitar over the accordion. The use of dead celebs as pitch people is an ethical gray area, but Pepsi’s association with one of the coolest rockers in history effectively extended the brand's decades-long argument that Coke is for squares.</p>
<p id="4T6d1x">For a better use of synergy, though, turn to maybe the most adorable ad in Super Bowl history, which sees a little kid in a Darth Vader costume struggling to use the Force on inanimate objects. Released during a time when the actual <em>Star Wars</em> movies had recently completed a disappointing revival, this VW commercial was, in a weird way, a reminder of what made the franchise so beloved in the first place. And when the ad was shared far and wide online in the week before the game, it also established "virality" as one of the Super Bowl spots’ major new goals.</p>
<p id="F6Af6A">According to <a href="http://www.adweek.com/creativity/7-years-later-vws-the-force-is-still-the-dark-lord-of-super-bowl-ads/">AdAge</a>, the spot “remains the most-watched Super Bowl ad of all time. And it’s known not just for its clever premise and fun execution—but it also changed the way Super Bowl ads roll out, having started the tradition of releasing them before the game to get the most visibility possible.”</p>
<h3 id="b6hreF">15. Budweiser, "Welcome Home" (2005): playing the patriot card</h3>
<div id="VvYFro"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9AGay3mZHeE?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="Iw57yF">During the Bush administration — in the era of 9/11 and the Iraq War — advertisers made direct appeals not just to consumers’ patriotic fervor but to their respect and admiration for the military. The "coming home" theme would become common in commercials, showing returning soldiers surprising their loved ones or being heralded as heroes by their hometowns.</p>
<p id="bXJgUV">Anheuser-Busch jumped on the trend early with this moving, understated spot, showing an airport full of people applauding a handful of troops as they stroll through the terminal in full regalia. Yes, it’s a pitch for beer. But it’s low-key enough that it could almost be mistaken for a public service announcement — or an Army recruitment ad.</p>
<h3 id="O8toXx">16. Doritos, "Live the Flavor" (2007): welcome to crowdsourcing</h3>
<div id="qOR55z"><div><div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kNxgxF-7SfA?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;"></iframe></div></div></div>
<p id="IYkzJV">Capitalizing on the rise of the internet and its attendant opportunity for "crowdsourcing," Doritos launched its "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign in 2006, inviting snackers to enter their own ads in a contest whose prize was money, exposure, and a trip to the game. The chip’s first big winner was this fairly slick spot, following two accident-prone Doritos-lovers as they wreak havoc while finding each other.</p>
<p id="s7kWHO">The contest generated a lot of advance interest in exactly what Frito-Lay would ultimately put on the air, and the commercial itself wound up on year-end "best ad" lists, while the PR agency Ketchum Inc. <a href="http://yannigroth.com/2015/04/17/how-doritos-crowdsourced-its-advertising-since-2006-csreport2015/"><strong>won an award</strong></a> from the International Public Relations Association. Last year’s "Crash the Super Bowl" was ultimately deemed the last of the series, bringing an end to a campaign that smartly exploited the 21st-century push toward total interactivity. But crowdsourcing still lives on, as evidenced by <a href="http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/2018-super-bowl-commercials-kraft-family-1202679911/">Kraft’s plan to build its 2018 ad out of self-submitted photos of families</a>.</p>
<h3 id="Qfp9Cn">17. Audi, "The Chase" (2009): the ad as blockbuster movie</h3>
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<p id="OHLskT">The products that regularly advertise during the big game tend to separate into highly specific selling modes. Beer ads are funny. Soft drink ads tend to be either poetic or wry. Snack food ads are often weird. And car ads are like one-minute Hollywood blockbusters. This Audi commercial casts British badass <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005458/"><strong>Jason Statham</strong></a> as an action hero who drives a car through time, stopping off in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Kinetic, clever, and colorful, the spot illustrates either how much ad agencies have learned from Hollywood or vice versa.</p>
<h3 id="feISPz">18. <em>Late Show With David Letterman</em>, "Oprah/Jay" (2010): expecting the unexpected</h3>
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<p id="UCUFr9">With all of the pregame hype these days about which companies have booked time during the game and which celebrities they’ve hired, we may never again enjoy a moment of genuine surprise akin to what happened in 2010, when a 15-second pitch for CBS’s flagship late-night show reunited <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001468/"><strong>David Letterman</strong></a> with both <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001856/"><strong>Oprah Winfrey </strong></a>(with whom the host <a href="http://www.oprah.com/own-oprahs-next-chapter/Oprah-Settles-Her-Feud-with-David-Letterman-Video"><strong>had a complicated TV relationship</strong></a>) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005143/"><strong>Jay Leno</strong></a> (a former go-to Letterman guest who’d snatched NBC’s <em>The Tonight Show</em> out from under him).</p>
<p id="tOpZyB">Ordinarily, the Super Bowl networks tend to limit their self promotion to in-game shots of stars watching from the stands, rather than squandering valuable ad time for their own programs — which could produce multiple episodes for the amount of money the network gets to fill that space. So memorable spots for actual TV shows are rare. That’s another reason this simple Letterman/Winfrey/Leno gag stands alone.</p>
<h3 id="qE49CI">19. Focus on the Family, "Miracle Baby" (2010), and 20. ManCrunch, "Super Bowl Kiss" (2010): stirring controversy</h3>
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<p id="gn1TDg">The cost of 30 or 60 seconds of airtime during television’s most-watched night of the year is so prohibitive that not many companies can afford it. But money’s not the only barrier to entry. The network airing the game can reject ads that are too racy or too potentially controversial. That’s why many media analysts<strong> </strong>were surprised in 2010 when CBS let the right-wing Christian organization Focus on the Family buy time for a commercial featuring Pam Tebow, the mother of quarterback Tim Tebow, pointing viewers to a longer version of her pro-life/anti-abortion message.</p>
<p id="F1hFg8">The decision to run the ad was especially divisive given that for that same game, CBS rejected a fairly tame commercial for the gay dating site ManCrunch, featuring two male football fans energetically smooching each other. Whenever a spot like ManCrunch’s is rejected, the attention it draws for being banned raises questions about whether the whole idea was to get free publicity. But either way, the choice to allow in some dicey ads while excluding others <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tebow-super-bowl-ad-stirs-abortion-uproar/"><strong>sparks valuable debate</strong></a> about <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/328021-tim-tebows-anti-abortion-super-bowl-ad-is-a-travesty"><strong>the divergences between social and corporate values</strong></a>.</p>
<h3 id="uwkFTP">21. Chrysler, "Imported From Detroit" (2011): the ad as social statement</h3>
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<p id="5olMSa">One of the longest (at two minutes) and most expensive (at around $9 million) Super Bowl ads ever made, agency Wieden+Kennedy’s unconventional Chrysler pitch makes great use of Eminem’s hip-hop anthem "Lose Yourself," accompanying images of Detroit at its best and worst. The spot sells a car, but more importantly, it advocates for a city and an American industry that in the decade prior to 2011 had experienced a lot of bad PR.</p>
<p id="AcK39Y">The Cannes-winning commercial went over so well that Chrysler and W+K tried to repeat the formula the following year with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIVjCghMo2E&feature=youtu.be"><strong>"Halftime in America,"</strong></a> featuring a "this country’s not as bad off as you may think" speech — delivered by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000142/"><strong>Clint Eastwood</strong></a> —that inadvertently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/business/how-clint-eastwoods-chrysler-ad-stirred-politics-common-sense.html?_r=1"><strong>stirred political debate</strong></a> over whether it was tacitly endorsing President Obama’s reelection. That’s how fast public opinion can turn. One year a social message is the toast of the Super Bowl; the next year it’s a minor scandal.</p>
<h3 id="CEKiv3">22. Always, "Like a Girl" (2015), and 23. Nationwide Insurance, "Boy" (2015): getting serious</h3>
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<p id="5b3fBL">Ongoing outcry over pervasive misogyny in Super Bowl commercials has cued advertisers that a lot of women watch the game, and that there’s room for pitches with a little more gravity. Always, a manufacturer of women's hygiene products,<strong> </strong>scored big in 2015 with a heartwarming spot that redefines what it means to run, throw, and fight "like a girl" — and in the process, the company found a fine balance between public service and brand awareness. The ad was a success, winning praise for introducing a long-overdue topic into a game whose players have gained a reputation for being abusive to women.</p>
<p id="JLUEYh">It’s possible to go too far with the emotional appeals, however. Nationwide’s "I’ll never learn to ride a bike … because I <em>died</em>!" ad was roundly mocked on social media in 2015, because even though Super Bowl viewers are willing to get a little teary-eyed during timeouts, they’re not so keen on outright morbidity.</p>
<h3 id="LRBBRO">24. T-Mobile, "One-Upped" (2015): ads that advertise ... ads</h3>
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<p id="vvzwHX">Widespread online interest in Super Bowl commercials has led to countless websites running postmortems: grading ads and recording audience response. Perhaps in reaction to that — or maybe just to extend the phenomenon a little further — in recent years, the big game has been preceded by teasers and promos and advance releases. Prior to 2015’s T-Mobile spot with comedians Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler, the cellular company and its agency Publicis Seattle spent a week doing interviews and posting behind-the-scenes footage, all for a 30-second commercial that— while funny — was pretty quickly forgotten.</p>
<h3 id="jEGFkh">25. Budweiser, "Brotherhood" (2013): hooked on classics</h3>
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<p id="5NaJax">If there’s one campaign that encapsulates the whole history and meaning of Super Bowl ads, it’s Budweiser’s long-running series of commercials featuring the company’s horse mascots. The first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=773AftoFylo"><strong>Clydesdale Super Bowl ad</strong></a><strong> </strong>aired in 1986, calling back to a promotional gimmick that Anheuser-Busch came up with in the '30s to celebrate the end of Prohibition.</p>
<p id="SLn5jS">Over the past three decades, Bud’s Clydesdale ads have been at times nostalgic, ironic, comic, and sentimental. In 2002, the horses <a href="https://youtu.be/2-_qRS4Li7A"><strong>honored the victims of 9/11</strong></a>. In 2004 and 2005, the brewer told a jokey mini story about <a href="https://youtu.be/xD6ghskNKa8"><strong>a donkey</strong></a> dreaming of joining the team. And with 2013’s "Brotherhood," the brewer and its agency Anomaly (with the help of RSA Films and director Jake Scott, son of Ridley) produced this touching spot that went viral online, thanks in part to some early promotion.</p>
<p id="OUjek8">Almost as soon as it aired, social media filled with people begrudgingly admitting that a beer commercial had made them cry, thanks to its use of Fleetwood Mac’s wistful "Landslide" and its story of a horse trainer being reunited with one of his Clydesdales. So it goes with these ads, year after year. Viewers know they’re silly and manipulative. And they buy into them anyway.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2017/2/3/14501032/super-bowl-commercials-ads-explainedNoel Murray2017-02-05T03:52:00-05:002017-02-05T03:52:00-05:00Every year, more people watch the Super Bowl. Why did it hit its ratings peak in 1982?
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<img alt="These people may or may not be counted by Nielsen." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zwGPTQkkSN2tvqDQTf5o2YpqeLM=/0x12:1000x762/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48737089/shutterstock_69502117.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>These people may or may not be counted by Nielsen. | <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-6732p1.html'>Lisa F. Young/Shutterstock</a></figcaption>
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<p>It's all thanks to US population growth.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/50">The Super Bowl</a> is the most-watched show on TV, year in and year out. Nothing else can even come close. And if you look at the game's viewership trends, it's a pretty safe bet that each year's Super Bowl will become the new most-watched program in American TV history.</p>
<p>Yet at the same time, the Super Bowl's <em>ratings</em> have remained more or less consistent since the 1980s. Indeed, the highest-rated Super Bowl to date aired in 1982. Even as more and more people watch the big game, the percentage of Americans who tune in has stayed at roughly 45 percent.</p>
<p>This is all thanks to how Nielsen calculates its ratings, the growth of the US population, and the slow decline of just about all other television programming. Or, put another way, it might seem like everybody in the country watches the Super Bowl — but only a little under half of us do.</p>
<h3>Why viewership growth doesn't reflect ratings growth</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HvskgwmijP8ERyujtNlgnp12Nas=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6001999/superbowl_audience.0.jpg">
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<p>A ratings point — calculated to the 10th decimal place — is a percentage of the number of American households that own at least one television and were tuned to a particular program at a particular time.</p>
<p>It represents 1 percent of the roughly 115 million American homes that own a television set, or 1.15 million homes. From there, Nielsen estimates viewership based on its demographic samples, which account for age, race, family size, and other things.</p>
<p>One of Nielsen's "homes" could be a family of five, all watching the big game, or it could be a single person, or it could be a big Super Bowl party. The company can't ever know with 100 percent certainty how many people are watching the game in any of these homes (that single person might invite a friend over!), but it has a pretty good guess.</p>
<p>Thus, Nielsen's metrics are, to some degree, imprecise, but the company's statistical sample is a fairly accurate rendering of the country's demographics in miniature, so its viewership estimates are about as accurate as such a statistical method is likely to produce.</p>
<p>When you look at the graphic above, you'll see that the overall viewership numbers for the game have climbed, more or less nonstop, for the past 30 years. And yet the rating (again, the percentage of people watching the game) has remained fairly stable. For example, the highest-rated game of the past 30 years was in 1986 — when approximately 48.3 percent of American TV viewers watched the Chicago Bears destroy the New England Patriots.</p>
<p>The reason, of course, is that the American population keeps growing. Forty-eight percent of Americans in 2015 is a lot more than 48 percent of Americans in 1986, which explains how there can be a gap of more than 20 million viewers between those two Super Bowls (92.6 million in 1986 versus 114.4 million in 2015) even as the 1986 game was two-tenths of a ratings point ahead of the 2015 game.</p>
<p>It also explains how the <em>M.A.S.H. </em>finale, which aired in 1983, remains the highest-rated TV show in American history, with more than 60 percent of the country tuning in, even if it's no longer the most-watched.</p>
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<img alt="Super Bowl ratings" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W3yYAGIlxrMmsoaPC3lRjsAAQhM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6001607/superbowl_audience2%20(1).jpg">
<cite>Javier Zarracina/Vox</cite>
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<p>The reason the Super Bowl is so much more valuable now, then, isn't that its ratings growth has been so explosive. It's that it's the only event that reliably delivers such a big audience.</p>
<p>Awards shows like the Grammys and Oscars do okay, but they rarely top the 45 million viewer mark and certainly don't hit the same ratings heights (again, because a smaller percentage of Americans watch those awards shows than the percentage that watch the Super Bowl). The World Series used to be a big draw but is now a much more modest one. And outside of heavily touted series finales (which also aren't what they used to be — see <em>Lost </em>in the graphic above), regular episodes of most shows can't even compete.</p>
<p>One final note: The network that airs the Super Bowl in any given year will often brag about "total viewership." In 2015, that number was 168 million. But "total viewership" simply measures the number of people who watched the game for at least a tiny portion of it, as opposed to the whole way through. While total viewership is interesting to know, it's not as reflective of the actual number of more dedicated viewers who watched the entire game.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/5/10921574/super-bowl-ratingsEmily St. JamesJavier Zarracina2017-01-23T10:00:00-05:002017-01-23T10:00:00-05:00Why Super Bowl ads are so expensive
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<img alt="Brandon Bolden #38 of the New England Patriots reacts during the first half against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game at Gillette Stadium on January 22, 2017." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_YLA-aqV4t1JnzdV_kEGtOvDBHs=/0x0:4096x3072/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52874001/GettyImages-632435504.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Brandon Bolden #38 of the New England Patriots reacts during the first half against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game at Gillette Stadium on January 22, 2017. | Patrick Smith/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Super Bowl is the <strong><a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/27/7907563/super-bowl-2015-time-history-seahawks-patriots">world championship of American football</a></strong>, but it's also US culture's premier marketing opportunity. Nine of the top 10 most-watched American television broadcasts of all time are Super Bowls, a list that is composed of the nine most recent games plus a <em>M.A.S.H.</em> special from 1983. That makes the game a unique chance for brands to put their message in front of a wide audience, a level of exposure that comes at a steep price — <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/super-bowl-ads-fox-5-million-1201792176//">$5 million for a 30-second spot this year</a>, a 76 percent increase over a 10-year span.</p>
<p>This naturally leads to the question: Is it worth it? Ad buyers consistently answer yes, but their enthusiasm for the big game is increasingly difficult to square with the basic math of audience growth.</p>
<h3>Ad prices are growing much faster than audience</h3>
<p>The $5 million Fox is asking for a 30-second spot during this year's game is the same as last year but still represents a 10 percent hike from two years ago, while the audience has grown for years at a bit less than two percent. That's no knock on the NFL's appeal; it simply goes to show that pro football has already saturated the American marketplace and can't really grow much faster than the national population.</p>
<p>The tendency for ad prices to outpace audience growth, however, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-01-20/super-bowl-ad-insanity-explained-in-six-charts">isn't remotely new</a>.</p>
<p>As Eric Chemi showed several years ago for Bloomberg, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-01-20/super-bowl-ad-insanity-explained-in-six-charts">viewership has essentially tripled</a> since the first Super Bowl in 1967, while ad rates have grown a hundredfold.</p>
<h3>The case for Super Bowl ads rests on the game's unique mass</h3>
<p>This means the case for spending money on Super Bowl ads can't rest on the size of the audience alone. Once upon a time, the big game may have been a good buy in terms of price per viewer, but those days are past us. Today, the argument for Super Bowl ads rests on the idea that the game's large audience is <em>unique</em>. It's not just the most-watched thing on the annual television calendar; it's the most-watched thing <em>by a large margin</em>.</p>
<p>In the first couple of decades of the Super Bowl's existence, mega audiences for television were common.</p>
<p>There were only three nationwide commercial broadcast networks, so any hit television show would, by definition, reach a very large fraction of the public. Finales of beloved series or widely publicized special miniseries (<em>Roots</em>, for example) would obtain especially vast viewership. Then, starting in the 1980s, along came cable, Fox, audience fragmentation, and the ability to record a show at home rather than watching it live.</p>
<p>Over the course of the 1990s these trends all continued, and they were joined in the 2000s by user-friendly DVR technology, on-demand video, and competition for attention from gaming and the internet.</p>
<h3>The Super Bowl is the king of live events</h3>
<p>The result has been an enormous structural decline in the audience for television programming, especially anything that doesn't demand to be watched live. The industry has responded, in part, by producing more live spectacles (<a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/1/10883788/grease-live-review-fox">like </a><em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/1/10883788/grease-live-review-fox">Grease</a></em>), but the main beneficiary has been live television events that were <em>already</em> popular — mostly sports, and especially the Super Bowl.</p>
<p>An ad that premieres during the Super Bowl will be seen simultaneously by a huge swath of the public in a way that simply nothing else will. That's not a value proposition that appeals to every company, but a critical minority of companies <em>are</em> interested in it, and those who do have only one place to go to buy it. And each year they're willing to pay more and more for it.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2016/2/7/10915988/super-bowl-ad-priceMatthew Yglesias2017-01-23T10:00:00-05:002017-01-23T10:00:00-05:007 things you never knew about being a sports camera operator
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<img alt="A TV camera shoots the Dodgers, as Sonnenburg often does." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ejMTvp33RfILcVk69XQdRxMQ0q4=/120x0:2886x2075/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47258422/sportsshot.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A TV camera shoots the Dodgers, as Sonnenburg often does. | <a href='http://gettyimages.com'>Luis Sinco/Getty Images</a></figcaption>
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<p>Being a sports camera operator has a lot in common with being an athlete: It takes endurance, athletic knowledge, and teamwork. And while you're at work, millions of people are sitting on their couches, crumbs on their shirts, judging your every move.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sportscameraman.com/">Joe Sonnenburg</a> has shot a wide variety of sports events for TV for almost a decade, and he posts highlights of his exploits on <a href="https://instagram.com/sports_cameraman/">Instagram</a>. He recently talked with me about how his job actually works, and — as importantly — he answered some of the questions any fan might have: How do they keep track of the baseball? When do they go to the bathroom? And is sports photography really all it's cracked up to be?</p>
<h3>1) Shooting the game is only a small part of the job</h3>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/2zTG3wszWt/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_top">A photo posted by Joe Sonnenburg (@sports_cameraman)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-05-17T23:30:32+00:00">May 17, 2015 at 4:30pm PDT</time></p>
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<p>Sonnenburg is a freelancer and works a wide variety of jobs, so procedures vary from game to game. But one thing's constant: He never calls it a "game." He's always shooting a "show," a name that's apt because of both the scope of his day and the much wider range of stuff he shoots.</p>
<p>He walked me through a typical day shooting a baseball game, and the big takeaway was that it can be a long, arduous process. A crew will arrive in the morning, unpack all the equipment, and cart it to the right location (it depends whether you're shooting center field or third base). Then it's time to build the camera, which means assembling the body, lens, and sticks for the tripod — a task that can take anywhere from one to three hours.</p>
<p>After that, crews "FAX" their cameras, which means they'll check in with the director, who's sitting in the TV truck and assembling all the camera feeds into a complete show (Update: Since this article was published, a lot of audio people have cast their vote that it's a FACS, short for facilities, though there are proponents of FAX as well). This process also involves making sure the crew can hear both the director and the announcer through their headsets.</p>
<p>Once the cameras are set up, the crew start shooting 15 minutes before the hour-long pregame show, and then stop ... well, whenever the game ends. Baseball doesn't have a clock, so they can be there a while. "Last week," Sonnenburg says, "I shot a 16-inning game that lasted five and a half hours." If there's another game the next day, they leave their cameras and get ready to start the process over again.</p>
<p>But you also don't start off shooting major league baseball games.</p>
<h3>2) Beginners have to shoot every sport — so get ready to learn water polo</h3>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/zDps4NMzac/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_top">A photo posted by Joe Sonnenburg (@sports_cameraman)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-02-13T21:50:14+00:00">Feb 13, 2015 at 1:50pm PST</time></p>
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<p>So how do sports camera operators get their jobs in the first place? Sonnenburg works as a freelancer, meaning that different crews hire him. And that means working a ton of different sports.</p>
<p>After taking college classes, he got an internship shooting USC football games and gained some experience. But once on the job market, he — like other camera operators — found himself shooting a wide variety of gigs, like a racquetball live stream.</p>
<p>Sometimes a camera operator's versatility requires a quick sports lesson. "I shot rugby a couple of years ago," Sonnenburg says. "The first part of our camera meeting, we went over basic rules so we had ideas of how it works."</p>
<h3>3) Camera operators have to carry cheat sheets</h3>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/3acc5wszcP/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_top">A photo posted by Joe Sonnenburg (@sports_cameraman)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-06-02T04:22:34+00:00">Jun 1, 2015 at 9:22pm PDT</time></p>
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<p>If you're working a sport you aren't familiar with, you need to be able to respond to a director's requests. Call sheets can help. By knowing a bit about the players on both teams, camera operators can speed up their coverage and make sure they're in on a key shot.</p>
<p>It helps that they have a constant line of communication with both the director and the announcer. "Sometimes if the announcer starts talking about someone," Sonnenburg says, "it's like, 'Okay, we want to get him.'" A good camera operator can also use a cheat sheet to anticipate the director's requests — if the quarterback gets injured, you want to be ready with a shot of the backup before anyone asks.</p>
<h3>4) As you progress, sports knowledge can be a differentiator</h3>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/2pH5XCMzag/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_top">A photo posted by Joe Sonnenburg (@sports_cameraman)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-05-14T00:40:10+00:00">May 13, 2015 at 5:40pm PDT</time></p>
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<p>A camera operator's knowledge can be a key asset: By knowing the game, he or she can shoot it better.</p>
<p>For example, baseball's byzantine rules and style of play are perfect for a knowledgeable camera operator. The good ones see the ball because they start to know where to go: "You have 80 home games a year; you can work 160 days," Sonnenburg says. "You just kinda learn to do it."</p>
<p>The same goes for spotting a hockey puck as it speeds by. "With hockey, you learn how the puck moves," he says, and it becomes easy to anticipate the geometry of the puck bouncing off the boards. If a slap shot's coming, you learn to whip the camera quickly toward the net. It's a combination of muscle memory and skill that allows Sonnenburg to capture split-second shots without actually being able to see the puck or ball on some occasions.</p>
<p>That skill becomes even more important when different cameras are involved.</p>
<h3>5) Super cameras require super camera operators</h3>
<p>Once camera operators have gained experience, their assignments can get tougher. Sometimes that means pulling more tight shots, in which control, focus, and framing are more important than in wider shots. Though Sonnenburg uses some of his formal training to compose shots, like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds">rule of thirds</a>, it ends up becoming instinct because gameplay can move so quickly.</p>
<p>That's even more important when working with a slow-motion camera. Some of the cameras shoot 1,000 frames a second, which means a mistake can last for an eternity. So the slo-mo that we all love to watch isn't just a technological innovation — it's a camera operator who has found the shot, focused and framed, and managed to hold it perfectly for an instant.</p>
<h3>6) All that makes camerawork its own endurance test</h3>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/7Mb3EcMzUW/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_top">A photo posted by Joe Sonnenburg (@sports_cameraman)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-09-04T03:53:37+00:00">Sep 3, 2015 at 8:53pm PDT</time></p>
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<p>Camerawork is a high-focus job without a lot of breaks. If there are multiple cameras, an individual crew member can usually sneak in time to run to the bathroom, but sometimes Sonnenburg has to scramble down scaffolding and back up in a short period of time.</p>
<p>So camera operators prepare for their work with rations. "I typically have a backpack, sweatshirts, rain gear, snacks, water, a little multi-cooler, and you'll always see that we carry bags around," Sonnenburg says. To stay awake, he'll bring along snacks to provide a bit of energy. "Sometimes baseball can be boring."</p>
<h3>7) But it's worth it for the perfect shot</h3>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DZ43lViO7_s" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>All that difficulty, however, is worth it when the perfect shot comes.</p>
<p>Sonnenburg recalls one from last year — seen above — when he captured a playoff-clinching slide by Hanley Ramirez: "It was just one of those things where I was in the right place at the right time, and also understanding there's going to be a play at home and I need to be there."</p>
<p>And that adrenaline rush often lasts the entire game as camera operators strive to grab the shot that will make highlight reels. In that way, they're not that different from the players they shoot — both are in search of the perfect play that will last beyond a single game.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/9/24/9391749/sports-camera-operator-tvPhil Edwards2016-02-09T08:54:50-05:002016-02-09T08:54:50-05:00The Daily Show has a message for Beyoncé's haters
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<figcaption><em>The Daily Show</em></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyoncé's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/7/10934378/super-bowl-50-halftime-show-2016-beyonce" target="_blank">Super Bowl halftime show</a> was a feat, filled with spot-on choreography, incredible fireworks, and a stunning performance overall.</p>
<p>But some people <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/8/10940558/beyonce-super-bowl-conservative-backlash">took issue</a> with the political messages of the show — specifically its references to the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney asked, "Is there really anything in America which can exclude race?"</p>
<p>On Monday night, Jessica Williams at <em>The Daily Show</em> <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/j79s76/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-beyonce-s-halftime-show-message">took on</a> the haters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Race was brought in because Beyoncé was brought in. And brace yourself, you might want to sit down for this, but Beyoncé is black. And as a black person, you walk around everyday constantly reminded that you are black — we're more likely to get paid less, we're more likely to get sent to prison, and we're more likely to win a dance competition. (What? It's not all bad.)</p>
<p>The point is Beyoncé is black and this song is her message. That's what artists do: Their message is in their music. Like how Chris Martin [of Coldplay] wore his Global Citizen armband to promote his message of ending worldwide poverty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Williams also took issue with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's comments about the halftime show. He said on <em>Fox and Friends</em>, "You're talking to middle America when you have the Super Bowl. So if you can have entertainment, let's have decent, wholesome entertainment."</p>
<p>Williams responded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are you saying that you can't talk about race issues to middle America? What are they — so delicate and unaware and maybe so white that Beyoncé is too much for them?</p>
<p>You know what's in the middle of America? <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/mike-brown-protests-ferguson-missouri" target="_blank">Ferguson, Missour</a>i.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Williams raises a good point: Would people take issue with the message if it were something else? After all, no one took issue with Martin's armband.</p>
<p>But for some people, some issues — despite the evidence of racial disparities <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10792720/black-implicit-bias">all over American society</a> and particularly the <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-police-racism">criminal justice system</a> — are apparently just too much.</p>
<div id="super-bowl-50-coverage__graphic-super-bowl-widget"></div>
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<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us">Police shootings and brutality in the US: 9 things you should know</a></div>
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<hr>
<h3>Watch: The racial disparities in the criminal justice system</h3>
<div data-volume-uuid="32038d0ba" data-volume-id="327" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-placement="article" id="volume-placement-6625" class="volume-video" data-analytics-label="The racism of the US criminal justice system | 327" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10949128/daily-show-beyonce-super-bowlGerman Lopez2016-02-08T14:00:02-05:002016-02-08T14:00:02-05:00Don't think Cam Newton is humble? Just ask Peyton Manning.
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<figcaption>Peyton Manning and Cam Newton congratulate each other after Super Bowl 50. | Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All eyes were on Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton throughout the biggest game in his young career. After years of criticism for being too brash and arrogant, Newton led his team to the Super Bowl, only to be crushed by the Denver Broncos 24-10 on Sunday night.</p>
<p>Newton was clearly not content with his own lackluster performance or his team’s defeat. While his team’s offense shone throughout the season, Sunday night’s performance left plenty to be desired. His discontent came off with curt, vague answers to reporters during the postgame press conference, after which <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/2/7/10934742/cam-newton-press-conference-super-bowl-50-panthers-broncos">he abruptly walked away</a>.</p>
<p>Broncos safety T.J. Ward even mocked Newton and the Panthers’ flashy, end zone dabbing ways, after the game, according to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/broncos/2016/02/08/denver-tj-ward-chris-harris-cam-newton/79995228/">USA Today</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t have to say nothing. We let them do all the talking. We let our pads talk. We talk with our helmets and our shoulder pads. They could do all the media talking, you know what I’m talking about? We’re not about that flashy stuff. We’re about that grind, putting in that work. Grind it. Work. That’s how you get the 'ship. They want to be famous. We want to be champions. They want to be rappers and backup dancers. We want to play football.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But at least Denver’s quarterback, Peyton Manning, says Newton eschewed his big persona on the field as the game ended.</p>
<p>"Cam couldn’t have been nicer to me," <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2016/2/8/10936998/peyton-manning-says-cam-newton-was-humble-following-super-bowl-broncos-panthers">Manning said </a>Monday on the <i>Today </i>show. "He was extremely humble. He congratulated me, wished me the best. I told him just congratulations on his outstanding season and what a great future he has. He’ll be back at that game, I promise you."</p>
<p>Manning, following what was rumored to have been his last game in the NFL, expressed some empathy for the opposing quarterback.</p>
<p>"I’ve been on that side of it," Manning added. "It is tough; it is not an easy pill to swallow."</p>
<p>For Newton, the bitter truth was clearly disappointing, as he <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/2/7/10934742/cam-newton-press-conference-super-bowl-50-panthers-broncos">came off as a sore loser</a> at the postgame press conference. But Newton has<a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/6/10925308/cam-newton-super-bowl"> pointed out before</a> that his behavior — whether it's his end zone dances or his sour mood at this press conference — is viewed through a racial lens. With so few black quarterbacks on the professional level, it’s difficult for some not to see him that way. Ward's assertion that Newton and the rest of the team just want to be rappers and backup dancers carried a racial tinge, even with Ward being a person of color himself. If anything, the racial elements are why we’re talking about Newton's behavior at all.</p>
<p>"I’m an African-American quarterback that may scare a lot of people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to," he famously <a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/nfl-blog/article56857428.html">said</a> earlier this year.</p>
<p>Just a few decades ago, black people weren’t thought to be equipped to be quarterbacks, and were steered away from the position. Since then, black quarterbacks like <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/30-years-before-cam-newton-he-was-the-first-black-qb-to-start-and-win-a-super-bowl?c=utw2&utm_content=buffer9692f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">Doug Williams</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/sports/football/warren-moon-clearing-way-for-black-quarterbacks-recalls-his-struggles.html">Warren Moon</a>, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/football-insider/wp/2014/02/07/a-black-quarterback-won-the-super-bowl-and-hardly-anyone-mentioned-it/">Russell Wilson</a> paved the way for Newton to dab his way to victory (and, uh, defeat).</p>
<p>For now, though, it looks like Newton will have to just <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/peyton-manning-handed-budweiser-32-million-in-free-ads-after-the-super-bowl-2016-02-08">crack open a Bud</a> with Manning and hope for another shot at a Super Bowl ring next season. Besides, we all know Beyoncé was <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/7/10934576/beyonce-super-bowl-halftime-2016-coldplay">the real winner</a> of the Super Bowl anyway.</p>
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<h3>Learn how the NFL's magic line came to be</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/2016/2/8/10939000/cam-newton-peyton-manningMichelle Garcia2016-02-08T11:49:00-05:002016-02-08T11:49:00-05:00Al Jazeera accused Peyton Manning of using the doping drug HGH. Here’s what we know.
<figure>
<img alt="Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos speaks to the media during the Broncos media availability for Super Bowl 50 at the Stanford Marriott on February 4, 2016, in Santa Clara, California. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TPnwOotr0UXAJUWczVpv5M6WR7Y=/49x0:4880x3623/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48744505/GettyImages-508391972.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos speaks to the media during the Broncos media availability for Super Bowl 50 at the Stanford Marriott on February 4, 2016, in Santa Clara, California. | Ezra Shaw/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ahead of the Super Bowl this weekend, rumors are circulating that Peyton Manning, the star quarterback for the Denver Broncos, used human growth hormone (HGH), a doping drug that is forbidden in professional sports.</p>
<p>The accusations surfaced in an Al Jazeera America documentary titled <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/dark-side-secrets-sports-dopers-151227133355144.html"><i>The Dark Side</i></a>, which cited one of Manning’s former pharmacists who claimed he had provided Manning the performance-enhancing drug by mailing it to Manning's wife.</p>
<p>Manning and other high-profile <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/26/10668562/peyton-manning-steroid-allegations-report-hgh-al-jazeera-clay-matthews-ryan-howard">athletes</a> mentioned in the report strongly <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2016/2/2/10894148/peyton-manning-hgh-public-relations-super-bowl%20">denied</a> using HGH, and a Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/inside-peyton-mannings-secret-investigation-into-al-jazeera-documentary/2016/02/04/d0da2f04-cb05-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html">story</a> published this week revealed that Manning had even hired private investigators to look into the key witness. That witness, a man named Charlie Sly, then recanted his story — all before the documentary even aired.</p>
<p>The NFL has opened an investigation to figure out whether Manning actually used the forbidden drugs. But as of right now, the back and forth between Manning and Al Jazeera, and between Al Jazeera and its main source, makes it pretty hard to understand what’s going on – and who’s really telling the truth. Here’s everything we know so far.</p>
<h3>Did Peyton Manning use HGH?</h3>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/26/10668562/peyton-manning-steroid-allegations-report-hgh-al-jazeera-clay-matthews-ryan-howard">allegations</a> against Manning specifically charge that the star football player used the performance-enhancing drug while recovering from neck surgery during the 2011 football season.</p>
<p>HGH is a synthetic hormone that <a href="http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/human-growth-hormone-hgh">supposedly</a> helps people build muscle and quick metabolic function – though the science is dubious at best. It was banned by the NFL in 1991, but the league didn’t start testing players for its use until 2014. That will make it tougher for the NFL to reach a definitive conclusion.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/28/meet-charlie-sly-the-man-telling-and-recanting-tales-about-doping-peyton-manning-and-ryan-zimmerman/">accusations</a> came from Sly, who at the time was an employee at the Guyer Institute of <a href="http://www.theguyerinstitute.com/">Molecular Medicine</a> in Indianapolis. He told an Al Jazeera reporter that while working there, he had shipped performance-enhancing drugs to a whole host of star players.</p>
<p>Specifically, he said he had mailed HGH to Manning’s wife, Ashley. That part of the story, at least, has some basis in truth.</p>
<p>Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary whom Manning has hired as a crisis consultant, confirmed to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/inside-peyton-mannings-secret-investigation-into-al-jazeera-documentary/2016/02/04/d0da2f04-cb05-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html">Post</a> that Ashley had indeed been mailed medication from the Guyer Institute. Citing her right to privacy, though, Fleischer declined to specify what sort of medication had been shipped.</p>
<p>Since recanting his story, Sly has said that he hadn’t begun working at the Guyer Institute at the time Manning was being treated at the clinic. But Al Jazeera says it <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/27/10672048/peyton-manning-steroids-hgh-report-al-jazeera-lawsuit/in/10436143">confirmed</a> that he was an employee at the time.</p>
<p>There are a few other scenes in the movie that strengthen the case that there was some truth in Sly’s original story. In another scene in the documentary, Taylor <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/teagata01.shtml">Teagarden</a>, a former baseball player for the Chicago Cubs, enters Sly’s apartment and talks about taking Delta 2, another banned substance. Two other men from Vancouver praise Sly on camera as a doping "genius."</p>
<p>But all this should be taken with a grain of salt. Sly did recant his story, after all, and Al Jazeera doesn’t have additional sources to back him up on his core claims.</p>
<h3>Al Jazeera used questionable means to produce this documentary</h3>
<p>Al Jazeera produced its entire documentary essentially around the testimony of one source, Sly. But Sly didn’t know he was a source until Al Jazeera contacted him a couple of weeks before the documentary was set to air.</p>
<p>They’d gotten Sly to talk by sending an Al Jazeera reporter under cover, posing as a former British hurdler trying to revive his running career, to solicit information about Sly’s past involvement in helping athletes dope.</p>
<p>Sly’s lawyer told the Post that Sly had bragged about all the athletes he had helped dope in order to boost his credibility with a new client, that client being the Al Jazeera reporter. "It was pure puffery," the lawyer, Travis Cohron, told the Post. "He was manufacturing a story to bolster his own appearance."</p>
<p>There are important ethical <a href="http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_ethics_of_undercover_journalism.php">considerations</a> involved in producing journalism that results primarily from undercover investigation, namely that it is used sparingly and accompanied by a lot of solid traditional reporting.</p>
<p>That’s not to say Al Jazeera hasn’t met those high standards: It did attempt to check out every aspect of Sly’s story, including contacting every named person in the documentary. But the fact that the news organization decided to run with the story days after its main source recanted his story should give people pause.</p>
<h3>Manning hired private investigators, whose role in this saga is also confusing</h3>
<p>Then it emerged through the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/inside-peyton-mannings-secret-investigation-into-al-jazeera-documentary/2016/02/04/d0da2f04-cb05-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html">article</a> this week that before the documentary aired, Manning hired private investigators to find the source of the allegations and look into him. Those investigators knocked on Sly’s parents’ door on December 22. The following morning, Sly released a statement recanting all his claims.</p>
<p>They questioned Sly the next day, December 23, in the presence of a lawyer. "Our thinking was it would be very helpful to find whoever it was who was making up lies about Peyton, and figure out why someone would fabricate information like this," Fleischer told the Post.</p>
<p>By the next morning, Sly had posted a short <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX4OyhNk6IM">YouTube</a> video, shot on an iPhone camera, recanting his statement in full.</p>
<p>Fleischer told the Washington Post that the investigators in no way coerced Sly into giving his recanting statement.</p>
<p>There is no solid evidence pointing to the fact that Manning’s team was at all involved in Sly’s decision to recant. But Deborah Davies, one of the Al Jazeera reporters on the story, raised <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ92cmY1JJA">questions</a> about the timing of Sly’s statement in an interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We contacted Charlie Sly at the beginning of December to put all the allegations to him by email, by letter and then with a phone message, and we didn’t hear anything from him until 48 hours ago. If you think one of the justifications for undercover filming is that you are filming someone where you have evidence of them wrongdoing, and they’re not going to talk to you openly, you have to say, Is he lying now? Was he lying during day upon day upon day of undercover filming? Because obviously the two don’t square.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>What happens next?</h3>
<p>The controversy had already started to fade when the Washington Post article revealing Manning’s private investigation landed. Despite increased interest with Manning’s team, the Broncos, competing in the Super Bowl, Manning has been asked startlingly few <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2016/2/2/10894148/peyton-manning-hgh-public-relations-super-bowl">questions</a> about the controversy.</p>
<p>In the meantime, two other athletes accused of doping in the documentary have <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/05/media/al-jazeera-ryan-howard-ryan-zimmerman/">sued</a> Al Jazeera. Manning said back in December that he <a href="http://www.nbcsports.com/video/peyton-manning-will-probably-sue-al-jazeera-hgh-report">"probably"</a> would, too, because "I’m that angry."</p>
<p>But so far, no lawsuit has been filed on his behalf.</p>
<p><b>Correction: </b>The original version of this article said human growth hormone (HGH) was banned by the NFL in 2011. It was actually banned in 1991.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2016/2/6/10925434/peyton-manning-hgh-superbowlMichelle Hackman