HISTORY OF THE SUPER BOWL The Super Bowl, also known as simply Superbowl — a territory acquisition athletic contest played upon a fixed agrarian grid using as a token an inflated porcine prolate spheroid — is the most important holiday of the year in America. Some will say that it is a secular holiday, others argue that it is truly a religious holiday. And there are many reasons why: it has a liturgy, lots of prayer, rituals, and indeed these rituals have changed throughout history. For example, it used to be that commercials were the part of the service that was intended for taking a bio break, but not in recent years. The commercials are now the most important part (for some) of the service, and indeed some (like me) watch Superbowl specifically for the advertisements. Google observes that those companies that post their ads on YouTube before the game received 3.4 times more views last year than those who didn’t.
- Food
After Thanksgiving Day, more food is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year. These are usually selected for their high caloric index, sodium content, and crunch factor — along with carbonated inebriating fluids.
- Decorations
Not only is food a major part of this holiday, so too are decorations. Consider Supermarkets (named after Superbowl) which decorate the chips aisle as it if is Christmas. If you work for Frito-Lay, it is Christmas.
- Advertisements
Advertisers will pay up to $100,000 per second for an advert. A 30-second commercial will go for $3.8M and most slots have been sold out since the beginning of last summer. Who can forget the premier of Apple Macintosh *, directed by Ridley Scott (who directed Gladiator and Prometheus), during the 1984 Super Bowl, when the ad closed with:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh.
And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”
- History
Super Bowl is the modern name, since 1967, for the professional football championship contests, which extend back into antiquity, Roman antiquity to be precise. This will be Super Bowl XLVIII, the Roman numerals for 47 to honor those Roman roots of gladiatorial contests. This contest is between the conferences of the National Football League (NFL), so named for the “League” the unit of measurement used to express the distance a Roman citizen could walk in 1 hour. The modern game, however, is about 4 times that length of time. The NFL is divided neatly into two unequal halves, the NFC (National Football Conference) and the AFC (American Football Conference), these are each further subdivided into Meetings, Get-Togethers, and One-On-Ones. The Super Bowl will not involve the ICFL (Continental Indoor Footfall League) as it is not a TLA (Three Letter Acronym). The winner of the Super Bowl will be declared the “world champions of football,” of course ignoring other inhabited countries who may point out that they call soccer “football,” and they have a championship involving not a bowl, but a cup. And involvement from teams from outer space is out of the question. For space action we’ll have to just wait for the next Star Trek movie. 
Where does the word “bowl” come from? Originally, it comes from the Rose Bowl, a college football contest, played in Pasadena, CA which is done in an elliptical stadium. Now a stadium is where foot races were held in ancient Rome, but spectator gladiatorial contests like this were held in amphitheaters, like the Colosseum in Rome, or Flavian Amphitheater, so named from the ancient Greek word because they were made up of two theaters joined together or theaters on both sides, but that is more ancient history than most people can handle.
- Half Time
Nominally named for being approximately in the middle of the game, or 2 quarters in, or 4 bits worth, or 50 cent, but not the singer. Unlike many other football broadcasts, this part is actually shown to the audience watching from home. These festivities consist of first-class and second-rate musical performers, some who have questionable taste in attire, others who have costuming clumsiness or so called “wardrobe malfunctions.”
- 2 Minute Warning
Super Bowl, while using a clock, does not intend that this is to be understood as representing actual “wall clock” time, rather, it uses poetic license to represent an epochal period that could last 30 minutes or an hour and a half, given overtimes.
- Celebration
There is one reason for celebrating at the end of Super Bowl, especially for “football widows” or “football widowers” like me. It means the end of the professional football season for the year! Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian www.billpetro.com * This was not the very first airing of that famous commercial. It had been shown just before midnight on December 31, 1983 on KMVT-TV in Twin Falls, Idaho in order to be eligible for that year’s advertising awards.