Last night, CBS aired a special called “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials.”  It was basically just an hour-long run-down of popular Superbowl ads from the past.  But at the end of the show, they revealed snippets of several ads that will be airing during this year’s Superbowl.  Here’s what the host said when introducing the montage:

“Here’s a sneak peak of a few more spots that will air during the big game.”

The montage didn’t include many commercials, but it did include footage from 2 of the 6 Crash the Superbowl finalists; SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI and KIDS THESE DAYS.  You can watch the entire show at CBS.com for free, but the sneak peek segment is actually available on it’s own.  Click here to watch it.

I really don’t know what to think about this.  Did Doritos really just announce two of the three commercials that won the Crash the Superbowl competition early?  I’m leaning towards “yes.”  CBS just declared to the world that those commercials “will air during the big game.”  That’s a definitive statement right there and if CBS doesn’t air those two ads, I’m sure a crafty lawyer could paint that as breach of a verbal contract or something.  At the very least, they’d be unfairly getting the hopes up of the projected winners.  I mean, could you imagine the phone calls that the makers of these two entries must have been getting when that show aired?  Would Doritos really put them in a position where they would have to tell all of their friends and family that CBS was wrong about which ads CBS was going to air on Sunday?

The case for the early reveal seems more plausible when you remember the way that the top 6 finalists were announced this year.  Hours before the official announcement, USAtoday ran a story about this year’s Superbowl ads that identified “Casket” as one of Dorito’s finalists.  So clearly, Doritos already broken with tradition this year and leaked information early to the media.

On the other hand, if you watch the entire montage you’ll notice something fishy.  Remember the Careerbuilder “Hire My TV Ad” Superbowl commercial contest?  Careerbuilder picked three home-made ads and then re-shot the ideas professionally.  All three of the re-shoots can be seen here:  http://www.careerbuilder.com/tv/

According to the Hire My TV ad website, Careerbuilder was going to pick JUST ONE of these three remakes and air them during the game on Sunday.  But the “Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” montage includes footage from ALL THREE Careerbuilder ads….including the commercial that CBS already turned down because of lewd content, i.e., a flaming fart.  The Hire my TV ad website has that ad, entitled “Worst Seat,” as labeled “Too Hot For TV.”

So either Careerbuilder decided to buy 2 more commercial slots and CBS changed their mind about the “Too Hot for TV” ad, or the above montage contains commercials that will not air during the Superbowl

Think about it this way; it must be hard to get companies to reveal their Superbowl ads early.  Maybe that’s why 5 of the ads in the montage are commercials that have already been seen all over the web.  So it’s quite possible that the producers of “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” were just lazy and instead of explaining that some of the featured ads MIGHT air on Sunday, they just lumped them in with the other sure things.  I guess we’ll find out the answer in just a few more days.

2/6 UPDATE: Hmmmm, yesterday, USA Today released it’s official list of all the commercials that will air during the Superbowl.  Careerbuilder is listed as only airing one ad.  So now we know for sure that 2 of the ads in the CBS montage won’t air during the game.  Unless the careerbuilder contestants already knew which ad was going to air, that was  areal punk move by CBS.  The might have got a lot of people’s hopes up for nothing.  Same goes for the Crash the Superbowl finalists.  I still think that the two featured Doritos ads will air, but now nothing looks 100% for sure.