The Superbowl was yesterday, and I sort of forgot to watch it, even though I was reminded that the halftime can be controversial. (Hmmm... Maybe they could have a special "Breast of the Superbowl" feature.)

Not that I'm anti-sports or anything. I did attend a college basketball game on Saturday, only to see my local team defeated. It's different when you have an interest in seeing a team win, and for me, basketball is easier to follow than football. There's more action in terms of points scored and it moves more quickly.

Plus, I had no Superbowl favorites, and I'm not much of a football fan.

This is not to say that I don't care about the Superbowl. Regular readers will know that I do care -- deeply -- about certain Superbowl traditions, and when I cannot watch it, I usually offer a good reason. Last year, I didn't watch the Superbowl -- a fact I blamed on sexism. That's important, right?

In 2006 when the controversy was raging over the Muhammad cartoons, my excuse (now delivered retroactively) is that I was all worked up about misogyny (including traditional South Park values and the sexuality of Sayid Qutb), a review of rules for commenters, and a certain permutation of the worse than Hitler issue. All very important topics, and Superbowl XL just kind of like skipped my mind totally.

In 2005 I missed the Superbowl because I went shooting with some friends. (Another perfectly valid excuse.)

In 2004 I blamed Monday Night Football filthiness or something arising out of the famous Superbowl breast-baring incident. So I do have feelings about the Superbowl. Really, I do. I even think about the Superbowl violence meme occasionally, as I did in the case of that Dobie Gillis lady who's now tyrannizing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

All of these very important and serious excuses aside, I am sure that few people really care about what I might watch or why. (My number one reason for not watching the Superbowl is that I don't watch television because I hate commercials.) So I wouldn't normally have thought this subject was even worth a post, but then I read that Ann Althouse not only didn't watch the Superbowl, she reported that fact quite nonchalantly in her blog:

Sorry, I just don't care. Except I heard that one team cheated. So I hope the other team wins. I did just hear Arlen Specter on C-Span radio talking about how Congress ought to investigate that cheating team because football is so important to America. My tax money is supposed to go into making sure some people playing a game don't cheat? Why doesn't he check out whether people playing Scrabulous on Facebook are using Scrabble Helper? God forbid he should confirm some judges or something more tediously congressional.

The important thing, though, is that Scrabble Helper link. I didn't know they had such a thing, and if I decided to cheat on Scrabble I'd have probably used the Anagram software I used to divine Hillary Rodham Clinton's hidden truths.

Thus "HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON" became "Halt Horny Old Criminal" (and possibly "Old Horny Maniac Thrill").

Just to show that I do not take important issues lightly, I gave the same treatment to yesterday's SUPERBOWL XLII that I gave to HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, and I came up with....

BURP SIX LIE LOW

(Drinking six beers while watching the Superbowl would just about have done it, too.)

UPDATE: The Superbowl is more important than I thought. Glenn Reynolds reports that even Hitler was disappointed. (I should pay more attention to these things.)