Nickelodeon’s Super Bowl broadcast: an ingenious, wildly chaotic splash

The first alternate Super Bowl telecast for kids was a brilliant feat of marketing aimed at stoking a younger generation's interest in the sport. It was also a legitimately compelling riot

This alternate Super Bowl program is, per a production company statement, intended for lovers of slime and really good sports time". Can't say I'm in either camp. But nevertheless I find myself parked in front of - or should I say glued to? - Nickelodeon's and CBS Sports' slime-soaked Super Bowl simulcast, while the other members of my family are across the room, watching the extra-tense sport showdown like normal people.

Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom, as the wackadoodle extravaganza is called, is streaming from an official broadcast booth overlooking Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Seated in front of the cameras is a pair of humans, sports commentators Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson; as well as partners-in-slime Tom Star and Bill Fagerbakke, who voice SpongeBob SquarePants and his starfish sidekick, Patrick Star, respectively. Thanks to the miracle of reality-augmented animation, the latter gentlemen appear on my screen as blobby animations in the commentator booth. A menagerie of other inhabitants of SpongeBob's underwater world pop up on the football field, such as Larry the Lobster and Sandy Cheeks, the bucktoothed Texan SpongeBob character who pulls her weight as (a hilariously biased) sideline commentator. Dora the Explorer cameoed as a rules expert. And let's not forget the enormous purple pelicans who sporadically materialize on the sidelines to burp up whole cheeseburgers by the dozen.