Super Bowl XXVVVVII

Super Bowl.

There, I said it.

I didn't say "The Big Game" or whatever other pseudonym they make advertisers use. The NFL has copyrighted Super Bowl and Super Sunday, just so you know. You might accidentally ask someone what they're doing for "Super Bowl Sunday" (which may be two violations) and that person might be working for the NFL (also copyrighted) and sue your ass for ... something. I don't know.

There are plenty of ads for stuff to do on Sunday. I think you're still allowed to call it Sunday, unless the Catholics have copyrighted that one. They have to disguise it as The Big Game or The Big Day - something big, that's for sure.

They like to use the Roman numerals too. It looks manly I guess. I think the one I'm using has too many letters. It won't fit on a hat or T-shirt. I can't wait for Super Bowl L. That just won't look right, but hey, they made their bed. In case you're keeping track, Super Bowl L will be in MMXVI, so mark your sundial.

They try to make it out to be a game, but it doesn't remotely resemble a football game. Too many people watch it to make it real football. Of course, if you couldn't gamble, most of us probably wouldn't bother. And there's a lot of gambling. Millions of dollars just in office pools. Ours says "Super Bowl Pool" so I guess if I win, I have to give the NFL a cut?

I checked the ticket scalping sites. A single ticket goes from $2,300 for an upper level end-zone seat to as much as $10,000 for one of those suites. Jesus, do you want to see a game that badly that you'd pay Mexican farm worker wages to go? That's why I bought a hi-def TV. Is TV Roman numbers for anything?

There's a big half-time show featuring Tom Petty. I can pretty much guarantee that he won't be showing us his nipples, like that girl did a few years ago. Nobody wants to see that. The game is on Fox, and their pre-game show starts at 9 Saturday morning. Seriously, it's a 33-hour pre-game show. We start by watching them paint the field.

It's at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Confused? Sure you are. First, there really isn't a University of Phoenix. It's a cyber-college, so maybe the game should be played on an X-Box? They paid a lot of money to name a stadium in Glendale after an Internet college in Phoenix. I wonder if I could get a cyber-scholarship to play Madden Football there? What's their mascot? Right, they don't have one.

Sorry to be so irreverant, but as I age, the nonsense seems to grow on me. When the Eagles went to the Super Bowl a few years ago, fans took out second mortgages on their homes to buy ticket packages and spend a week in Jacksonville, Florida. Really. It's the first time in history that anyone went into debt to leave their house to visit Jacksonville. It's a football game. Kind of.

People and corporations spend a shitload of money on this game. It's a shame that most of them can't even use the Super Bowl name or logo, but we're smart enough to know that they're talking about the Super Bowl, even though they call it something else.

Since the first one, which wasn't called the Super Bowl (it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game), it has grown into a cottage industry to the point that this Sunday is the biggest secular holiday in America. The cost of a 30-second commercial in 1967 was $40,000. Today, 30-seconds will cost you $2.7 million. Think about that the next time you're picking up a six-pack of Pepsi products.

Come to think of it, the commercials might be better than the game.