Stay tuned: The past 24 years of the Super Bowl lead out show

     The 1996 "Friends" episode "The One After the Superbowl"
     is still the most watched Super Bowl lead out show ever.

Here’s the thing about not being a professional: you’ve got to make sure real life is taken care of first before you commit to what you’re passionate about. And with that in mind, I present to you an examination of Super Bowl lead out shows in March.

The question that seems to constantly perplex the networks is, “What makes a successful, and hopefully good, lead out show?” Just because a network figures something out one year, doesn’t mean it can be emulated for their next Super Bowl year, or even the next calendar year.

So for no real reason other than me liking lists, I decided to take a look at the last two decades of lead out shows (1990-present), arbitrarily put them into “great,” “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” columns, and talk about where and why things went right or wrong. At the end, we’ll regroup and talk about what we’ve learned and what the postgame slot might go to next year.

Season 3 of "The Voice" transitions from unwatchable to legitimately maddening

   From left to right: Miranda Lambert's husband, former Mousketeer,
   massive tool, half of Gnarls Barkley, and the short haired guy from
   Maroon 5.

This fall, NBC launched a new sitcom called "Go On", in which widowed sportscaster Ryan King (Matthew Perry) is forced into a handful of "coping with loss" therapy sessions with "Community"-esque misfits before returning to work full time. And Ryan isn't ten minutes into his first session when his sports background takes over and he decides to turn the various losses and pains suffered by the group's established members into a bracket-style tournament that the Tyler James Williams character dubs "March Sadness".

But this parade of sob stories fighting to win over a jury of one's peers isn't unique to "Go On" - in fact, the ridiculous, over the top sob stories on the new season of "The Voice" consumed a third of the primetime hours on NBC this past week.

I didn't much care for the parts of "The Voice" final performance show I didn't fast forward through

If I wasn't totally sure the last time I checked in on "The Voice", I can now say with certainty that I won't be back for the third season of this show.

How "The Voice" went from refreshing to unbearable

When NBC's "The Voice" premiered its first season on April 26 of last year, it was a surprisingly refreshing take on the singing competition series, and a very good alternative to the dreadful "American Idol". I started watching "The Voice" for two main reasons: I was curious to see if this was the show that could pull NBC out of the toilet, and of course there were those spinning chairs.

The second season premiered after the Super Bowl and the ratings were higher than ever. But the show has taken a severe plunge in quality this season and a show that I once found did everything right has now done almost everything wrong.