Tonight is the Super Bowl!  Aren’t you excited?!  Yeah, me neither.  I’m one of those pretentious assholes who only watches the game for the commercials.  Apparently the San Francisco 49ers are playing the Baltimore Ravens?  Man, I don’t know who to root for.  On one hand I think ravens are super cool and spooky and it’s awesome that Baltimore actually named a pro sports team in honor of an Edgar Allen Poe Poem.  (Whoa…you can’t spell “Poem” without “Poe.”  Trippy.)  But I guess I’m hoping San Fransisco will win since San Francisco is the greatest city in america…after Chicago of course.  And I guess some dude on the Ravens is a straight up murderer or something?  Oh well, like I said I just care about the commercials, specifically, the Doritos commercials.

Once again we’re at the end of another installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  Tonight, two fan-made Doritos ads are going to be aired during the game.  One will be the commercial that won the public vote and the other will be selected by a panel of judges from FritoLay.  So in less than 12 hours we’ll know who won this contest.

But why wait?!  History has shown that it’s actually pretty easy to predict the results of The Crash.  The entry that wins the popular vote is usually the one that gets the most views and positive media attention.  Since the voting is taking place on facebook, let’s check the facebook view counts of all 5 finalists.  These were the view counts from January 29th which was the last day of voting:

FACEBOOK VIEW COUNTS:

Goat 4 Sale:  1,216,333
Fashionista Daddy:  1,002,366
Road Chip:  923,630
Fetch:  805,179
Express Checkout:  777,475

If people are actually voting after they watch an entry the winner by a mile will be Goat 4 Sale.  It’s just blowing everyone else away.  And that ad is also blowing everyone away when it comes to media coverage.  I have a google alert set for “Crash the Super Bowl” and I can tell you that Goat 4 Sale has probably been getting more media coverage than all the other entries COMBINED.  So I think it’s a slam dunk that Goat 4 Sale will win the online vote and air during the big game.

That means the big mystery here is who will come in second.  I’ve noticed that the ads that air are always the most popular ones.  Doritos doesn’t offer the Million Dollar Ad Meter prize just for fun.  THE REALLY LOVE GIVING THAT MONEY AWAY.  Every time a fan-made Doritos commercial wins a top spot on the ad meter, Doritos gets a ton of free publicity.  So the judges at FriotLay always chose to air ads that they think people will love.

That means that Fetch and Express Checkout are probably out of the running.  They’re good commercials but they’re not the kind of Super Bowl ads that people would love. Plus as we can see from the view count numbers, they haven’t really caught on.  So the race for 2nd place comes down to Fasionista Daddy and Road Chip.  Fashionista Daddy got about 100,000 more views but Road Chip was created by 2 directors who have literally made the CTSB finals 4 times. now  They understand how to get out the vote and they also were able to get a lot more press coverage.  So it’s looking like a close race.  Doritos will want to select an ad that has the potential to go viral on youtube after the game.  So as I tie-breaker let’s take a look at the view counts of the 5 finalists on youtube:

Yo WTF!?  Road Chip is CRUSHING all the other finalists, even Goat 4 Sale?  That’s kind of shocking.  The lopsided results of the unofficial view count race probably mean that the FritoLay is going to air Road Chip during the Super Bowl.  Road Chip got twice as many views as Fashinista Daddy so this decision is pretty much a no-brainer.

But even if Doritos doesn’t care about youtube views, I think they would still pick Road Chip for one simple reason; it has a dog in it.  For 3 years in a row Doritos has aired at least one fan-made commercial that featured a dog.  And those dog-themed ads have always kicked ass on the USA Today Ad meter.  So I just don’t think there is any chance that Doritos will break with tradition and not air a dog-themed ad.  Also, as I said, the 2 directors that made Road Chip have literally created 4 commercials in the last 3 years that went on to make the Crash the Super Bowl finals.  But they have never once won any of the bonus prizes.  The CTSB judges seem to be a sentimental lot and sometimes it seems they make their picks because they want to see certain contestants succeed.  So I think the Road Chip team has a serious sentimental edge in this race.

A few final predictions:  If Goat 4 Sale airs it’s going to be ranked the #1 commercial of the game and the ad’s director will win the million dollar bonus.  If the Moose the Goat (the star of Goat 4 Sale) isn’t on the front page of Monday’s edition of USA Today I’ll eat a tin can.  If Road Chip airs I think it will land somewhere in the top 6.  There’s some tough competition this year but it could maybe get the #3 spot.  Sometimes Doritos chooses to air bonus CTSB ads but I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight.  A lot of companies have decided to run 60 second ads this year which means there were fewer slots available.  Plus the ones that were available cost 3.8 million dollars each!  So I think the days where Doritos would air an “extra” Crash the Super Bowl ad are behind us.

We’ll have the final results of the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest for you as soon as they’re in so be sure to check back here after the game.