First up, Conan O’Brien in one of the funniest ads of the year. It brings up a good point though, Conan never does ads. So why would he do one this year? Could it be because NBC wants him to get some more exposure before he takes over The Tonight Show this fall?

Next up is Monsters vs. Aliens appearing in the Sobe commercial. This one makes a little more sense, since Sobe sponsored the 3D trailer event for Monsters vs. Aliens just seconds before. All in all though, the characters seemed a bit out of place in an already weird commercial.

Alec Baldwin of 30 Rock introduces the American public to Hulu. Hulu is part owned by NBC, so this could be considered a house ad. But it isn’t a subsidiary, so it stands to reason they produced their own commercial. And who better to play a television executive then a man who already plays a television executive on TV. At one point he’s actually watching his own show.

Finally MacGruber is an SNL skit turned Pepsi commercial. This one seemed most curious, since Pepsi already had a series of commercials that were stylistically different geared towards their brand “refresh”. Watching this (hilarious) commercial almost makes me wonder in NBC threw in the SNL guys for an extra ad sale.

Two weeks ago a colleague helped put the monumentality of the situation in perspective for me. As a die-hard Red Sox fan watching her team collapse, Nisha posted this message on her Facebook account about her newborn son:

“Nisha is bummed [the] baby will have to wait at least until June to experience his first Boston championship celebration.”

I’ll admit I felt a little bit bad for the baby, it’s not his fault he was born a Sox fan. Still it reminded me that in my 23 years of life I had never experience the thrill of a world championship in my hometown.

Maybe that would be acceptable if I was from the rock capital of the world (Cleveland) or the coffee and software capital of the world (Seattle).

I’m from Philadelphia though – a tried and true blue-collar sports town. This is the home of Wilt Chamberlin, Mike Schmidt, Dr. J, Reggie White, and the Broad Street Bullies.

Yet I was part of a lost generation who could only feed off our parents’ stories of parades for the Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers. We watched each of our teams play in championships in vain, leaving only bitter memories of Joe Carter, Hockeytown, Shaq/Kobe, and Brady’s Dynasty.

For my entire life, my Philadelphia sports fandom has been defined by losing. I took a certain sense of pride in the Phillies earning the 10,000 loss if only because it certified that our grief was not in vain – we really were the worst franchise in the history of competition.

I wasn’t really sure what to do going into Monday night, with a 3-1 series lead with our ace pitching at home. Surely it can’t end like this!

And then the skies opened up and the game suspended. It was enough to feed my pessimism and paranoia for two more days.

Then suddenly, without theatrics or controversy, we won the game and a world championship.

For the first time in my life I’m a winner. In the last few years I’ve been building my self-confidence up, feeling more comfortable with my talents, and enjoying life. And now my team is a world champion.

What I am I going to do with all this sarcasm and disappointment? I don’t know.

What I do know is that perhaps for the first time in my life, I will be able to watch sports with a bit more patience. Take a little more satisfaction in the playoff birth and divisional championships, because they make the big one all the more sweeter.

I think my biggest concern now is that next year we have a championship letdown. As bad as never winning a championship is, never winning at all is much worse.

So thanks to Ryan, Chase, Jimmy, Cole, Jamie, Shane, Chris, Jayson, Brad, Brett, Pedro, Carlos, J.C., J.A., Joe, Eric, Matt, Geoff, Chad, Scott, Pat and Charlie for keeping things interesting and making this year so special. I look forward to the day when I can tell my children about watching you play. After all who knows how old they’ll be the next time Philadelphia wins a championship.

Oh bother, I guess we’ll have to complain about the Eagles now.

Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.

This is especially true when you include the coaches. Liang Chow, the coach of the Iowa gymnast Shawn Johnson, was a popular co-caption of China’s national gymnastics team in the 1980s before he emigrated to West Des Moines. The U.S. women’s volleyball team was coached by a former Chinese player, Jenny Lang Ping, when it defeated China a few days ago.Lang, a national hero in China, led the Chinese team to a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It would be like Michael Jordan coaching China’s basketball team to a win over America.

The Associated Press reports that there are 33 foreign-born players on the U.S. Olympic team, including four Chinese-born table tennis players, a kayaker from Britain, seven members of the track-and-field team — as well as Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan’s civil war, who was resettled in the U.S. by Catholic Charities, and Leo Manzano, the son of an illegal immigrant Mexican laborer. He moved to the U.S. when he was 4 but didn’t gain citizenship until 2004.

It is amazing that with our Noah’s Ark of an Olympic team doing so well “that at the same time you have this rising call in America to restrict immigration,” said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. “Some people want to choke off the very thing that makes us strong and unique.”

I couldn’t agree more – more and more American ingenuity is coming from outside our borders. This is a good thing – the best and brightest from around the world want to build a life in our country. At the same time, the rest of the world is continuing to get better and brighter. So I would appreciate it Lou Dobbs and his crazies focused their attention not on closing our borders, but on raising the bar for our education system so American kids can compete in this new world. How many new schools could be built for the price of that border fence?

In what the Guardian is calling “the clearest breach yet of the host nation’s promise of free media access during the Games,” Independent Television News journalist John Ray was detained as he attempted to cover a Free Tibet protest close to the main Olympic zone. Ray was dragged along the ground and forcibly restrained for about 20 minutes.

Virtually ignored in China, there was a great deal of attention paid in the U.S. press when President Bush attended church in Beijing. There has been little coverage anywhere that Hua Huiqi, the head of an unrecognized Protestant church, was arrested while on his way to the same church service that Bush attended.

The official Xinhua News Agency said all the applications were withdrawn, suspended or rejected. Rights groups and relatives have said some applicants were immediately taken away by security agents after applying to hold a rally, prompting critics to accuse officials of using the plan as a trap to draw potential protesters to their attention.

What’s sad and shameful is NBC hasn’t covered any of these events in its primetime coverage, instead holding up Mary Carillo’s video postcards as their vision of China. I have been drawn in by the spectacle and wonder of the Chinese culture as I’ve watched these Games too, but its important to remember we’re seeing China as their government wants them to see it. I hope at some point we can get a more objective reports from China.

Update: The New York Times has a story on one of the detained protesters this afternoon.

Update: And new search launched today too. Great things come in threes.

On the first day, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium. Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. On reports that Hitler had deliberately avoided acknowledging his victories, and had refused to shake his hand, Owens recounted:

“When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.”

He also stated:

“Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

Jesse Owens was never invited to the White House nor bestowed any honors by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledged Owens’ accomplishments, naming him an “Ambassador of Sports.”

Wow. So while we love to remember Owens’ triumph over Nazi racism, we neglect to remember how racism continued to thrive in the United States. Owens gave up his amateur status after those Olympics in hopes of commercial opportunities that would never materialize for him. After years of financial troubles he became a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. He was criticized in 1968 for supporting the athletes who gave the black power salute and tried to convince Jimmy Carter not to boycott the Moscow games shortly before his death in 1980. He died of lung cancer – the Olympic sprinter had become a heavy smoker. Just another reminder that the truth is always more interesting than the legends.

Update: I also just found this nice piece from ESPN’s SportsCentury series on Jesse Owens.