Super Bowl XL

(Super Bowl XL will be shown live 7am today on ESPN. Replay 8:30pm and 12:00mn)

Today is the biggest and the grandest sporting day in the USA. No ifs, no buts. Favorite Pittsburg Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks will square off at Ford Field in Detroit. Unlike in the NBA Finals or in the World Series, there is no home court advantage in the Super Bowl since the NFL sets the date and venue in advance. Numbers

The National Football League is the only organization that uses the Roman numerals on its Finals logo. This is in relation to the NBA and MLB that puts the year before the "Finals" and World Series", respectively.

The NFL and all of American sports are really all about numbers. Americans sports buffs are so obsessed with numbers that even their kids can rattle out the ERA's of Roger Clemens, the batting average of Barry Bonds or the 40 yard speed of the Carolina Panthers' Steve Smith like saying the alphabet. In fact, during World War II, these sports stats were used as codes during military operations. AFL and NFC

The Super Bowl was born out of the marriage of the American Football League and the National Football League. The NFL, founded in 1920, was older than the AFL by 40 years. But when the AFL started raiding the NFL (similar to what the MBA did to the PBA then) of its superstars and offering them lots of money, the NFL blinked and offered a merger. The first meeting of the NFL and the AFL champions was held in 1967 and was called the "Super Bowl I", a word coined by the granddaughter of the Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who was playing at that time at home with a ball which Hunt overheard as, "Super Ball".

Biggest one day sporting event.

In terms of hype, nothing comes close to the Super Bowl- not the Olympics or the World Cup. While the World Cup can boast of 1.5 billion viewers worldwide, the Super Bowl can only claim 800 million. But considering that the sport is inherently American, it's still a lot of people. Even people who are not interested in football attend the so-called Super Bowl parties. Americans even call this event as an American Holiday.

One event during the Super Bowl Week is called the Media Day. Media representatives from all over the world will have all the players and coaches to themselves. Non-sporting media outfits from all over the world congregate during media day and ask the players the silliest questions, like, "can you spell referee?" and the like.

Companies are also scrambling to hawk their product during the game. Toyota, Ford, Anheuser Busch and Unilever, to name a few, gladly forked over $2.5M for a 30-second advertisement during halftime. That's whopping $83,333.00 per second! Ten years ago inn Super Bowl XXX, the cost of a 30-second segment was $1.37M. Halftime Show

The Halftime Show has gone a long way. In Super Bowl I, it was the generic show of the Universities of Arizona & Michigan bands who performed in the show. 1996 was Diana Ross and Aerosmith performed in 2001. Two years ago, it was the infamous "outfit malfunction" of Janet Jackson.

Today, it's the band that would not have been allowed to perform at least 20 years ago, the Rolling Stones. The Stones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts are as old as the Super Bowl itself, debuting in the USA at around the same time as Super Bowl I.

Sometimes, people forget that there is still a game to be played and that all the happening around the Super Bowl are there because of the athletes that play it. I'd pick the Pittsburg Steelers, 28-10, over the Seattle Seahawks. Look out for Steelers Troy Polamalu and Jerome Bettis.