Sunday, Cruddy Sunday

"Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" is the twelfth episode of the tenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on Fox in the United States on January 31, 1999, just after Super Bowl XXXIII and the premiere of Family Guy. In the episode, while buying new tires for his car, Homer meets a travel agent called Wally Kogen. After becoming friends, Kogen offers Homer a free bus ride to the Super Bowl, as long as he can find enough people to fill Kogen's bus. Several people, including Bart, tag along on what soon becomes a problematic trip. Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa set out to find the missing parts of "Vincent Price's Egg Magic", a celebrity-endorsed craft kit.

"Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" was directed by Steven Dean Moore and written by George Meyer, Brian Scully, Mike Scully and Tom Martin, the first credit Martin received for the series. Mike Scully jokingly said that the episode was "thrown together[...] without thought or structure" by the writers. For the subplot, the writers tried to come up with the "most boring thing" Lisa and Marge could do to pass time. The episode features several guest-stars, including comedian Fred Willard, country singer Dolly Parton, Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, sports commentators Pat Summerall and John Madden, and former American football players Troy Aikman, Rosey Grier and Dan Marino. All guest-stars played themselves, except for Willard who portrayed Kogen. The episode pokes fun at folk singer Burl Ives, former United States president Bill Clinton as well as the series' fans, among other things.

In its original broadcast, the episode was seen by approximately 11.5 million viewers, making it the tenth most watched program of the week as well as the second most watched scripted program on the network the night it aired. The episode was released on home video for the first time in 2004, and in 2007, the episode was again released as part of the DVD set The Simpsons – The Complete Tenth Season. Following its broadcast, the episode received mostly positive reviews from critics.

After its original broadcast, however, a scene in the episode involving a fictitious, sexually suggestive Super Bowl commercial for the Catholic Church became a subject of controversy. The scene garnered scrutiny from the American Catholic anti-defamation and civil rights organization The Catholic League, whose members sent hundreds of angry letters to the Fox network, demanding any mention of Catholicism in the episode be excised. In September the same year, when the episode was supposed to repeat, the Catholic League asked Fox if they could censor the scene, which the network agreed to. The network's decision was criticized by journalists and staff members. The censored version of the episode is still in syndication. ^{[citation needed]}