Tim Tebow and ManCrunch: 2 Hot-Potato Super Bowl Ads

It's a week before kickoff, and two television ads already are causing controversy over what's appropriate to show during the Super Bowl: one ad because it will be aired, the other because it won't.

CBS rejected a commercial on Friday for gay dating Web site, ManCrunch, saying it didn't meet network standards. The ad features a Packers fan and a Vikings fan taunting one another across the couch, until an accidental brush of their hands in the chip bowl sends sparks of an entirely different sort flying and (much to the discomfort of a stoic third friend watching the game with them) the two men make out. CBS deliberated almost two weeks before announcing it was rejecting the ad.

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation President Jarrett Barrios released a statement saying that there seemed to be a "homophobic double standard" in the network's decision, calling it "a problem when they do something like this at the same time as they allow an anti-gay group like Focus on the Family to place ads during the Super Bowl." Barrios was referring to a recent policy reversal by CBS to allow issue advocacy ads, specifically an anti-abortion spot from Focus on the Family, featuring Tim Tebow.

A CBS spokesperson told CNN, "After reviewing the [ManCrunch] ad, which is entirely commercial in nature, our standards and practices department decided not to accept this particular spot." The phrasing of CBS's statement -- "entirely commercial" -- seems deliberate here. And, it is true that comparing CBS's treatment of the Focus on the Family spot and the ManCrunch spot may not be an entirely fair comparison, since networks do treat issue and commercial ads differently.

But, looking only at some of the other "entirely commercial" ads that have made it through screening, it's hard to see what line ManCrunch's ad would cross that previous commercial ads haven't already blithely trampled. In fact, a Miller Lite commercial for the 2003 Super Bowl featured an argument between two women ending (somewhat confusingly) in them fighting in their underwear in a fountain before (even more confusingly) starting to make out. So -- unless CBS is concerned that ManCrunch is plagiarizing Miller's idea -- it's a little late to start drawing this particular line, commercial ad or not.