Famous Football Fables-Fairy Tales and Super Bowl Facts

Once upon a time there was a kingdom of millionaire men who roamed a grassy field in tight fitting uniforms to capture an oval brown pigskin to the cheers of the common people. The coveted reward of a shiny trophy and jeweled rings to be placed on the finger of each man who battled to the end and won, was their just reward. They returned to their home city greeted as heroes and conquerers for all time. And all in the NFL kingdom lived happily ever after.

There are many tall tales that have been thought to be true about the big game, known as Super Bowl Sunday.

You may or may not have heard the story that the Super Bowl got its name in 1969, 2 years after the first big game was played. According to theatlantic.com, the tickets show it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game., but headlines in newspapers of that time are were already calling it The Super Bowl. After the third world championship, the The Super Bowl game was officially printed on the tickets to the game. These were the headlines at the time. New York Times sports section read that very first Super Sunday—January 15, 1967—"The Super Bowl: Football's Day of Decision Stirs Nation." The lead in the Los Angeles Times' report on the game the next day read, "Like a stern parent chastizing a mischievous child, the Green Bay Packers soundly thrashed the upstart Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 Sunday in Memorial Coliseum in the first Super Bowl game." So it would appear that the NFL starting calling the game Super Bowl because the media called it that.
There is the football fable stating that Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys before he moved the team to Kansas City and renamed them the Kansas City Chiefs, was the person who named the big game, the Super Bowl. The rumor is that after he saw his children playing with a big bouncy ball, called the super ball. Many sights, such as Wikipedia and The Dallas Morning News, New York Times and Wall Street Journal claim this is true. In June 1966, word super was already being attributed to the much anticipated first NFC /AFC championship. The June 10, 1966 New York Times sports article starting reporting about “a new superduper football game for what amounts to the championship of the world." According to The Atlantic Monthly, bowls were the end of season college football games.like the Cotton Bowl. The Los Angeles Times and on Sept 4, 1966 and the Washington Post referred to the final game “as the Super Bowl" Pete Rozelle, who was the NFL commissioner wanted a name for this game. As the media and Hunt started calling it the Super Bowl, Rozelle thought it was not sophisticated a name. But finally for the 3rd championship game the cover of the program for the game called it the Super Bowl. Since the 4th game, Super Bowl has been printed on the game tickets.

Another fancy fable is that during half time of the Super Bowl game so many people run to the bathroom, it overloads the system in big cities. Although there is definetly an upsurge in simultaneous usage, the city sewer systems have always been able to handle it. In 1984 Salt Lake City had a 16 inch water main breakage on the day of the big game. There actually has been no proof, just mere coincidence that this was caused by extraneous flushing.

Another rumor: in the U.S.is that 66% of avocados are bought within 3 weeks of the Super Bowl. Although avocado sales increase dramatically aroung this big sports day, Super Bowl Sunday is estimated to contribute to 5% or approximately 8 million pounds of avocados. 14 million pounds of avocados are sold for Cinco de Mayo each year.

Super Bowl and the stock market fairy tales link the the winning team to how well the stock market will do. Should the AFC league win, the market will go down. It will be a bullish stock market if the NFC wins. During the first 31 Super Bowls this was true 90% of the time.
Statistics show that this has happened about 4 out of 5 times, this was accurate. While this is impressive, there is no logic to this, because as far as anyone knows, there is no correlation to the game of football and the stock market. Although, if the majority of investors, believe this, then they may invest more, and perhaps this causes more buying than selling in the stock market. Although, there are many other beliefs that are connected to the rise and fall of the stock market besides this one.
Another famous fable is that Disney parks are empty on Super Bowl Sunday. The truth is that January is a slower tourist month to begin with, but Super Bowl Sunday is pretty typical for the month of January, and there may even be a slight increase in visitors, as it is something to do for all the non football fans.

Super Bowl Media day is the day reporters interview people in costumes

Host cities do not make hundreds of millions of dollars hosting the Super Bowl, they make about $30 million dollars. Still a nice tidy profit. Some cities that have high tourist traffic, may not see much of an increase.

 

Super Bowl Media day is the day reporters interview people in costumes

Yet another famous fable is the viewing audience on Super Bowl Sunday. Rumors spread that nearly one billion viewers watch the big game. According to NFL.com the Super Bowl is shown in 232 countries around the globe and estimates anywhere from approximately 750 million - one billion football watching people will tune in. The truth is these numbers are unsubstantiated. The number of viewers in the United States can be more accurately documented through Nielsen ratings. Beyond the U.S. there is no way to track the viewer count. A compnay called Initiative, based in New York, and specializing in media research compiles the information from 54 main television viewer areas and can extropolate that the average number of tv viewers is about 98 million, and approximimately 151 million viewers will be watching at some point in the game. Mathematical calculations show this is way under the over exaggerated one billion viewers.

The fable about Super Bowl and beer consumption. The beer institute said the Super Bowl is the highest beer drinking day of the year, and that 10 ½ million barrels of beer are consumed. If this were true, each person would have to drink 1 ½ cases of beer on Super Bowl Sunday. This
number seems too high to be realistic. While the Super Bowl is a big beer drinking day, other holidays, like St. Patricks day are thought to be higher.


Super Bowl is a Super Bore: This football fable is shown easily in the statistics. Out of the first 22 Super Bowls,this was somewhat tru. 16 of tthe 22, were had a 10 point or more difference and many of them blow outs. But that was then, and this is now.
In more recent times, the games have been very exciting. 5 out of the last 9 Super Bowls were within 4 or less points. Free agency and salary caps have created more of a balance between the leagues.