Will Mayweather vs Pacquiao tap Super Bowl Sunday?

THE 49TH edition of the Super Bowl, America’s biggest, most spectacular sporting event kicks off, at 3:30 p.m. Sunday (7:30 a.m. Monday, Manila time).

The National Football League championship pits the defending champions Seattle Seahawks against the three-time titlists New England Patriots at  University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

But like in previous years, what’s bigger on Super Sunday is not the game itself, it’s the halftime entertainment, parties, food and the television commercials that make their worldwide debut.

Super Bowls account for the 21 most watched programs in American TV history. Last year’s contest between the Seahawks and the Denver Broncos was watched by 167 million viewers.

So what will be the discussion around the water cooler the following day? Halftime performer Katy Perry’s wardrobe, the color of her hair or the most memorable advertisement?

What about a blockbuster announcement that the Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Manny Pacquiao fight will be held in May?

After both boxers spoke and were photographed together for the first time during a Miami Heat home game this week, there is rumor that both fighters worked hurriedly on a Super Bowl commercial.

Previously, in a Foot Locker advertisement, Pacquiao riffed on the ongoing attempt to schedule the mega fight without ever mentioning Mayweather’s name.

“He’s going to fight me? He’s going to fight me?” the eight-division boxing champ hilariously asked in that endorsement.

On average, a 30-second Super Bowl spot costs about $4 million (around P176.1 million).

Spending money to earn money and gain maximum exposure on Super Bowl Sunday hopefully crossed the minds of the fight’s promoters now in a constant huddle, speculated an online business newspaper.

A boxing website said with millions tuning in around the globe, the expense of a Super Sunday commercial or a notice of some sort would translate to millions of bucks.

As talks by both camps get stickier each time, the possibilities are getting more uncommon, to say the least.

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“It’s a rural jumbotron,” reported a friend who requested anonymity, about a tarpaulin plastered with the faces of Nueva Ecija Gov. Oyie Umali and his wife, Rep. Cherry Umali.

My buddy says the giant poster is perched atop a storefront near the center of Cuyapo town, our birthplace.

It announces the “repair and rehab” finally, of the hellish road between the province’s first district municipalities of Cuyapo and Nampicuan that’s been marked by craters for as long as residents of both places can remember.

Work’s been excruciatingly slow on the six-kilometer artery that motorists to Baguio and points north could use as an alternate route.

But talk about the poster has been fast and thick, according to my friend.

That’s because in the manner of “epal” notices, it makes it appear that the couple, not the province, is paying for the project.

The poster is also intriguing since Ms. Umali represents the third district in Congress, not the first.

Traditionally, major public works projects get started in Nueva Ecija and many parts of the country as elections draw near and never get finished.

My friend said voters would know who to blame, just in case.