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But it can definitively be said that analyst Boomer Esiason needs some help.

ABC's telecast of Super Bowl XXXIV Sunday was technically sound, didn't miss a single important replay, wasn't buffeted too much by intrusive commercial breaks and benefited from a typically flawless performance by Al Michaels.

But Esiason was of little use. The former Bengals and Jets quarterback displayed all of his shortcomings and lack of experience to an audience of 130 million.

It needs to be noted that there's history to ABC making strange hires for this show over the last 30 years. Don Meredith, Alex Karras, O.J. Simpson and Joe Namath never auditioned for their jobs in the booth, and Esiason ranks better than at least two of those fellows.

And it was probably unfair for Esiason that he was thrust into the three-man booth a year ago and this year had to adjust to a two-man set.

But he's clearly not getting better.

It took only the first series of the game for Boomer to make first-grade level errors: talking over a live play, talking about one player (Jevon Kearse) while another player is on camera (Eddie George) and talking about some other facet of the game while the truck is rolling a replay that needs explaining.

He obviously rallied, but only because he couldn't have gotten worse.

ABC's decision to force-feed Esiason to the public was typical for its owners, Disney, who care too much about image. Sportscasting isn't surgery, but is it really important to have a good-looking analyst? I mean, give me a John Madden or Dan Dierdorf who will forecast how a game plan unfolds any day over someone like Esiason, who always tells us what we just saw.

One first-quarter sequence showcased Esiason's lack of experience in contrast with the simple way Al Michaels tells a story.

Boomer used a lot of time and words trying to explain the Titans' personnel problems in their secondary, and most viewers were probably confused by the end of his spiel. In the next sequence, as the camera shined first on Dick Vermeil and then on several assistants, Michaels noted how many former NFL head coaches are on Vermeil's staff and told the audience what Vermeil told him: ``I love to collect professors.''

The first half of the game was poorly played, what with the Titans struggling to find themselves and the Rams blowing several red-zone opportunities, and it impacted the telecast. Michaels wasn't about to prop the game up when it didn't deserve it, so much of the chitchat dwelled on negatives.

When the second half got hot, Michaels slipped into gear and carried the telecast by always setting the situation. He's never been one to rely on his analyst, and that proved to be an asset Sunday.

In the fourth quarter, Michaels was trying to put the Rams' season into context and found this one: ``This story is too good for a movie.''

And at show's end, Michaels told the story of how Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, who lives her life according to her astrology charts, told her GM, John Shaw, that Kurt Warner might be the next Johnny Unitas.

Said Michaels: ``How else can you explain that the Super Bowl champs are the St. Louis Rams?''

The other revelation came during the pregame show as 49ers quarterback Steve Young was totally relaxed and candid in front of the camera. The four-hour pregame show had a very comfortable pace, too. ABC knew viewers would tune in and out, and its decision to go with a casual attitude worked.

Sunday's game has also become the Super Bowl of advertising, what with so many companies having launched successful and memorable ad campaigns on the most-watched TV show of the year. But the class of '00 was more or less a big zero.

There were no breakthrough lizards or Chihuahuas. Almost a third of the ads during the game were from dot-com companies, and they fell into two groups, boring and confusing. All of the companies could use a bit of dot-comedy the next time.

The worst ads were from Internet companies. One used cowboy ``cat herders'' to sell their product. Another filmed its ad in black and white, with a confused woman surrounded by people dropping non sequiturs. A third was literally selling spam, saying it would pay you if you would send an ad with your email.

Personally, I didn't like seeing Christopher Reeve walking in an ad for an investment company, and the 7-Up ``show us your cans'' commercial was the most pathetic ad of the day.

Three of the best ads used athletes: the Schwab ad that shows Charles Barkley, Barry Sanders and Tara Lipinski in a retirement home, the Bud ad with designated driver Wayne Gretzky taking a guy home in a Zamboni and a WebMD.com ad with Muhammad Ali shadowboxing the camera.

The three best were whimsical. A Budweiser ad had an acting dog finding his howling motivation by recalling the day he chased a Budweiser truck and smashed into a van. E-Trade showed a monkey dancing to a boom box, followed by a line of text, "Well, we just wasted $2 million."

The best pair came from Mountain Dew. In one, Dew-ers sang about their drink to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. In the other, a dirt biker pursues a speeding cheetah, jumps on the cat, pulls a can of Dew out of its mouth, and says, ``Bad kitty.''