Two events conspired so that I could see most of Super Bowl XLV live. I checked late Saturday night to see what stations were showing the game locally, and “ESPN” was one of them. Turns out, yes, it was the ESPN we now get in the apartment since we got a minimal TV package last month. And then I happened to wake up on the couch at about 4:15 a.m., with remote already set to the right station, which I just pushed, in my groggy state … which put me about five minutes into the second quarter, when it was 14-3. I stayed till the end, at about 7:20 a.m. and just made due with about five hours of sleep.

So, the game? Interesting. Entertaining. Quite. But something of a mess. Those three turnovers by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The 13 penalties. The bone-head plays.

So, thinking this over … I have decided this is the best of the deeply flawed Super Bowls, pushing aside the infamous 16-13 Super Bowl V won by the Baltimore Colts over the Dallas Cowboys. The game won on a 32-yard field goal with five seconds left … but the one that included an astonishing 11 turnovers.

Some observations:

–Give the Packers credit for taking complete advantage of their 3-0 turnover edge. Not only did they never give up the ball, they turned the three turnovers (two Roethlisberger interceptions and a Mendenhall fumble) into the maximum 21 points. Most critical was the touchdown drive after the Mendenhall fumble on the first play of the fourth quarter. It was 21-17 at the time, and the Packers had managed only one first down in four possessions in the fourth quarter. It was “when” not “if” the Steelers would wipe out the last of what had been an 18-point lead. But Aaron Rodgers drove them 55 yards in eight plays to get it back to 28-17. Only once did Pittsburgh have the ball and a chance to take a lead, and it came inside two minutes.

–Two key injuries to the Packers in the game almost wrecked them. Losing receiver Donald Driver and cornerback Charles Woodson put second-tier backups onto the field. Guys like Brett Swain were not supposed to make big plays, and the Packers struggled because of it.

–If Jordy Nelson, a guy I never heard of until about Friday, is Green Bay’s third-best receiver, they must be pretty good. Nine catches for 140 and a touchdown?

–I didn’t see the first quarter, when the Packers apparently were at their best. In the nearly three quarters I did see, Pittsburgh clearly was the better team, man for man. The Steelers could throw it, run it, cover the pass and (totally) stop the run. The Packers offense was erratic because they couldn’t block for Rodgers very well, couldn’t run a lick and their receivers had about six drops. They survived on those turnovers and the big early drive and the field-goal drive at the end.

–Is it just me … is it high-definition TV … or has the NFL gotten even faster, markedly so, in the past three years? Must be the TV. I imagine everyone is a little faster, but it can’t changed as much. The new high-resolution viewing gives fans a better sense of the utter mayhem that is an NFL game, much of which is a function of the speed of large men. I found particularly interesting just how tight the “tolerances” were on many plays, particularly when the Packers were passing. Rodgers’ open receivers were open only in the sense that they were just inches clear of Pittsburgh defenders. Not a stride or a half-stride. Inches. The touchdown pass to Greg Jennings in the second quarter, for instance. Ryan Clark covered about 10 yards while the ball was in the air and missed deflecting it by, literally, a fingernail. Another reason why the Steelers seemed like the more talented team: Ben Roethlisberger didn’t need to be as exact as did Rodgers.

–When did the whole NFL turn into the sports musical “Hair”? I haven’t paid close attention to the league since the 2007 season, and in the three seasons since it’s as if nobody in the game has gotten a haircut. It used to be Troy Polamalu and 10 guys with dreadlocks. Now, it seems like half the league. Weird. Are lots and lots of regular guys in the States wearing hair to their collars now? Didn’t think so.

–I missed the commercials. Not necessarily missed them in a wistful sense, but in a literal sense. These overseas pickups of American sports events … do not come with the originating channel’s commercials package. And Super Bowl commercials usually are interesting. Well, some of them. Instead, I got long, long, long breaks (and my goodness, they are; soccer fans are right; the breaks do harm the game) with nothing but more and more ESPN promotional ads, repeated ad nauseum. Apparently, the Masters is coming up, and so is the NCAA playoffs. No, really. All things being equal, I’d take the real commercials, but only for this game.

–The right team won. In terms of personal preferences. I have never liked the Steelers, going back to when they sucked in the 1960s. I never felt sorry for them; just didn’t like them. Still don’t. Plus, I now have a bad case of “Steelers fatigue.” They’ve been contenders for too long, most of 40 years; I just wish they would go away for a while. The Patriots, too.

So, yes, an interesting game, a tactical game, a game with some really nice plays but plenty of awful ones, too. The better team lost, except that the better team shouldn’t turn it over three times … though two of the three were fairly flukish.

I’m glad I woke up for it … I’m glad ESPN happened to be the network who picked it up the overseas rights for the game, because I don’t get Fox over here — not for what I’m willing to pay.