Super Bowl 'facts' to make you a hit

Today is Super Sunday – the day of the ultimate football game (although, as I point out nearly every year, Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas was correct nearly five decades ago when he said, "If it's the ultimate game, why are they playing it again next year?").

It's Super Bowl Sunday! Or, as we call it, "The Tom Brady Variety Show."

In case you thought today was about sports, consider the fact that the NFL threatens to sue any business that uses the words "Super Bowl" to promote something that isn't tied to the league. By "tied," I mean "paying" the league.

Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl.

A sport? Far from it. The Super Bowl is big business, although it's big business that you will watch.

If you're a sports fan, you'll watch because it's the biggest sports event of the year. If you're not a sports fan, you'll watch it because everyone else is watching it and you can only see the Puppy Bowl so many times before you get cuteness fatigue.

There's a problem, though. The game will take nearly four hours to play and you will probably run out of things to say, whether or not you know anything about sports.

What to do? Here's one suggestion: Memorize the following "facts" and recite them during the game. Yes, "facts" is in quotes because I made some up. But the people you talk to won't know that (although you will, because the made-up "facts" have an asterisk after them).

Want to be part of the discussion? Drop these tidbits during today's game:

• The National Chicken Council says 1.25 billion chicken wings will be eaten during the game, bad news for 612,500,000 chickens.

• Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the Super Bowl is being played, is the most popular five-syllable city in America (Interesting, since Philadelphia – hometown of one of the teams in the Super Bowl – also has five syllables. It ranks fourth, also behind Colorado Springs). *

• Despite the frequent misspelling by your co-workers and mother-in-law, the game is called the Super Bowl. Two words. Both capitalized. (That's an emotional reaction from spending 20 years as a sports writer, which is also two words).

• Pink will sing the national anthem. She is the second color-named person to sing the anthem during a Super Bowl. (Redd Foxx performed an obscene version in 1968.) *

• Despite the similarity of their names, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski and kicker Steven Gostkowski are not related. Weird.

• Justin Timberlake will perform at halftime this year, but most observers consider the show-stopping performance by Up With People in 1976 ("200 Years and Just a Baby: A Tribute to America's Bicentennial") as the greatest entertainment spectacle not only in Super Bowl history, but in world history. *

• My sister, Jana, traveled with Up With People for a spell. I denied it to my friends.

• Billy and Benny McCrary, who gained fame in the Guinness Book of World Records as "fattest twins," with that awesome photo of them on the minibikes, never played in the Super Bowl.

• Tom Brady's father, Oliver, was the goofy cousin introduced during the final season of "The Brady Bunch" in an effort to bolster the show. Which means Tom Brady is second cousins with Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marcia, Jan and Cindy. *

• You can bet on nearly anything in the Super Bowl, including whether the national anthem will take more than 2 minutes (historic average: 1:58) and whether the coin toss will land "heads" or "tails" (tails has a four-Super Bowl winning streak and leads the overall series 27-24).

• The winner of the Super Bowl goes to Disney World for one day, but the losing team is forced to go there for a week, as punishment. *

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.