This column would have been better served running two weeks ago, when first written. But more timely things came up — like the tempest over Metro’s name change and DU’s unseemly (perhaps paranoid) challenge to protect its supposed “brand” and imagined “trademark.” Both are contrived and, at bottom, bogus concerns. But money talks and, when it does, legislators listen. It now remains to be seen what sort of spine Metro officials and administration show by way of rebuttal.

In any case, the biggest religious holiday in America — also known as Super Bowl Sunday — is now long buried “in the books,” as broadcast geeks are fond of saying. And, after two and a half weeks — an eternity in our 24/7 news cycles that encourage the attention span of a gnat, or 140 characters — does anybody remember the score? Or even who played?

What more people probably remember are the ads — which hardly did themselves proud at $3.5 million per spot — Madonna at halftime and rapper M.I.A.’s middle finger.

But that’s how far we’ve come —with the Super Bowl game itself a mere sideline show to the hype of a mega-production where the ads and halftime extravaganza create more buzz — more electronic than face-to-face than the game itself. No matter how heart-stopping the final-minute drama may have been — and this year’s Super Bowl XLVI had plenty of that — the game, the raison d’etre, gets lost in the hoopla competing for fractured attention.

Pre-game “countdown” hype included experts’ appraisals of the ten best Super Bowls ever. The experts had short memories and only one cited — in 10th place on one scorecard — Super Bowl III in January, 1969. When other experts had Joe Namath’s New York Jets as much as 40-point underdogs to Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts. Namath brashly guaranteed a win, and delivered. That SB III was one of the more memorable upsets ever and gave legitimacy to the fledgling American Football Conference never registered with the cult-of-contemporary boys.

Being old enough to remember Namath’s Jets and chronically old-school by choice, I actually watched this year’s game with a bunch of friends — mostly women — and was somehow more wowed by Mario Manningham’s amazing sideline catch of an Eli Manning pass to set up the Giants’ winning drive in the final minute. For me, that catch was far more exciting than seductive sirens selling cars (Fiats) or soccer star David Beckham’s tattoos, which only shows how terminally out-of-touch I am.

Some of the more explicit and sexually suggestive ads were decried by the Parents’ Television Council watchdog group — whose protests will have as much effect against the power of TV ad megabucks as gun control fares against the National Rifle Association.

The most controversial spot turned out to be Clint Eastwood plugging Chrysler cars with a “It’s Halftime In America” spot. It generated 17 million YouTube hits, but not everyone was amused, and Republican strategist Karl Rove saw a dark plot to re-elect Barak Obama. Spinmeister Rove called the ad “a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best wishes of the management.”

You can’t make up stuff like that if you tried.

But despite all-important controversy, the main run of mega-ads on “TV’s biggest day of the year” was sophomoric, boring and, as Joanne Ostrow observed in The Denver Post, “… an uninspired slate … lacking new ideas …” In retreating to a retro time – supposedly safer, happier and less complex than our own — advertisers borrowed heavily from the movies to recycle the same sludge, in only slightly updated form, seen years ago. So we got Seinfeld. And Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller and other nods to happier days. I found the lineup as exciting as watching shag carpet grow. I’ve been demographically dead for years. But where does this pitch leave advertisers’ 18-to-34 demographic darlings?

Time was when friends got together to watch the Super Bowl, drink too much beer and eat too much guacamole — all while talking to each other, face to face, in thousands of living-room mini-communities. Years ago, I’d go to gatherings where lots of participants didn’t know (or care) who was even playing. And that was part of the fun, because getting together with friends was the point.

No more. Now, electronic-toy wizardry allows you to watch the TV game with one eye with an iPhone in one hand and an iPad on your lap. You can thus “interact” with other “fans” — never in the same room — and comment on the plays you all saw separately via Twitter and Facebook.

Thumbs busy and eyes distracted, you may miss much of the game, but — as one ebullient fan crowed — “instead of talking to the guy next to me about a play, now I can tell 2,000 followers.” Hot stuff. But it meshes perfectly to what has happened to our notion of community. Even a community that lasts only for a long afternoon’s journey into night. Chopped up by commercials, of course.

Tags: Colts, Half time show, Jets, Super Bowl XLVI

People: barak obama, Clint Eastwood, David Beckham, Eli Manning, Joanne Ostrow, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, Karl Rove, Mario Manningham, Matthew Broderick