Super Bowl XLVII: Scott Pelley to interview President Obama during pre-show

There are some familiar traditions these days with Super Bowl Sunday that come to mind right off the bat (the halftime show, the commercials), but then there are some that take you a minute or to realize are traditions at all: including the annual interview with the President of the United States.

On some level, it actually makes sense for this interview to happen every year: America obviously wants its citizens to be deeply involved in politics, and there are few other opportunities when there will be so many Americans sitting down in front of their televisions in order to watch one singular event. CBS announced this week that their Evening News anchor Scott Pelley will speak with Barack Obama at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, which is just late enough before the game that people will start to flicker their televisions on.

Of course, the downside to having this interview so close to football is merely that you run the risk of having Republicans and Democrats going ballistic at your Super Bowl party and throwing your bowl of wings against the wall. Let’s hope for that reason that the conversation ends on a light-hearted topic, and that there is a funny commercial that follows it up so that no one really has that long that they can stay angry.

Last year, this honor went to Matt Lauer of “The Today Show,” and the year before that it was “The O’Reilly Factor” host Bill O’Reilly who took on the challenge (and actually was criticized by some of his loyal viewers for not being hard enough on the President).

Do you look forward to this interview every year, or is this something you are usually ignore in favor of meeting the pizza guy at the door? If you want to look back at some of the memorable ads from last year, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: CBS