COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:Bowl ‘em over with trivia

Might as well face it. There’s nowhere to hide. Whether you love it, hate it or couldn’t care less, it’s Super Bowl Sunday.

Doesn’t matter if you don’t know about football, don’t care about football, couldn’t tell a football from a calzone or Peyton Manning from Eli Manning, it’s all Super Bowl, all the time this weekend.

Today’s game is the second most-watched sporting event on the planet, with more than a billion viewers in 140 countries. What’s the first? Anyone? Right you are — the World Cup Final — which we call soccer, they call football and everyone is nuts about, except us.

But for a few hours this afternoon, the eyes of the world are on Miami, which is in Florida, and Dolphin Stadium, which is in Miami Gardens, which is just outside Miami, which is in Florida. Sorry. We already did that part. There are all sorts of places you can go to find out pertinent Super Bowl information — winners and losers over the years, individual and team records, etc. But as you know, that is not what we are about. Our job is to provide you with an endless supply of odd, useless facts that no one needs or wants. Pay attention, especially if you’re going to a Super Bowl party today. People will be very impressed, sort of.

According to the National Restaurant Assn., one out of seven Americans will order takeout for a Super Bowl soiree today, which rhymes, in a way. Of those, 58 percent will order pizza and 20 percent will order sandwiches. One out of 20 Americans will watch the game in a bar or restaurant. Speaking of watching the game, how is this for party pooping? The NFL will hunt down anyone who advertises a group viewing of the Super Bowl on a screen larger than 55 inches like a couple of bloodhounds out of “Cool Hand Luke.” Private parties are fine, and you can show it on a screen that’s 14 feet by 16 feet — you just can’t advertise.

If you prefer to see the Super Scrum in person, you’ll need a ticket, and you better check the limits on those cards first.

Tickets for Super Bowl Numero Uno in 1967 sold from $8 for the cheap seats all the way up to $12. The face value of tickets for today’s game is $400, which is a meaningless figure as you’ll see shortly, and if you think you’re getting one, dream on. Almost all the seats at a Super Bowl — and “almost all” means over 80% of them — are gobbled up by the two teams involved and the NFL. The wimpy number of seats that are actually sold are scooped up by ticket brokers faster than you can say “first down.” Online ticket prices for today’s game — hope you’re sitting down — are about $2,000 per seat for seats on the edge of the stratosphere and up to $14,000 for premium seats. And yes, Virginia, that is $14,000 per seat.

Speaking of pricey, if you want to run a commercial during the game, the good news is that airtime is selling for the same as last year — about $2 million for a 30-second spot. See? If you look hard enough, there still are bargains out there.

According to the California Avocado Commission, Americans will eat 8 million pounds of guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday, which makes it the mother of all guacamoleintensive days, and the Insurance Information Institute says there are more alcohol-related traffic accidents on Super Bowl Sunday than any day of the year except, what a surprise, St. Patrick’s Day.

The first three games weren’t called the Super Bowl. After nixing “The Big One” and “The Last Game,” the newly merged AFL and NFL ran out of ideas completely and called it “The AFL/NFL World Championship Game.” If that doesn’t get you all tingly, nothing will. In 1969, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt suggested “Super Bowl” after he saw his kids playing with a toy called “Super Ball,” and the very same one is now on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Speaking of cities, New Orleans and Miami have hosted the most Super Bowls, eight each, with Los Angeles in second place at seven. Every Super Bowl except the first has been a sellout, which is also meaningless since 80% of the tickets are comps. The largest Super Bowl crowd in history was at the Rose Bowl in 1980, when Pittsburgh beat the Los Angeles Lambs — sorry, Rams — 31-19, with 103,985 fans present and accounted for, two of whom were my wife and I, oddly enough. My two strongest memories are the incredible air show put on by Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, and taking about nine and a half hours to get out of the parking lot.

Have there been any father and son teams in the Super Bowl? Why yes, there have. Five fathers and sons have played in Super Bowls, in games about 20 years apart: Tony (Dallas Cowboys, father) Dorsett and Anthony (Tennessee Titans, son) Dorsett; Bob (Miami Dolphins, father) Griese and Brian (Denver Broncos, son) Griese; and Manu Tuiasosopo (Forty Niners, father) and Marques (Oakland Raiders, son) Tuiasosopo.

And if you think there are going to be wild tailgate parties in the Dolphin Stadium parking lot before and after today’s game, you are mistaken. No tailgate ragers and no alcohol in the parking lot or carried inside, no exceptions. Once inside, you can, of course, purchase as many $12 beers and $7 dogs as you wish. This is America, you know.

That’s it then — everything you never needed to know about the Super Bowl. There will be a billion people watching, so sit up straight, no double-dipping and try not to drip. I gotta go.