NBC’S SUPER BOWL RUNNETH OVER ‘N’ OVER ‘N’ OVER ‘N’ . . .

Electrifying, wasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but for me, the highlight of NBC’s marathon 6 1/2-hour Super Bowl Sunday was its coast-to-coast yak between The Lipper and The Gipper.

They schmoozed football for eight minutes during a two-hour pregame show. And “NBC Nightly News” anchorman Tom Brokaw actually looked interested when President Reagan recalled the block he missed as an offensive lineman in his long-ago football days at Eureka College.

Oh, no, Ronnie, not the football yarns . . . again? Oh, yes.

“It was our ball on our own 35-yard line. We were one point behind. There were 20 seconds to play, but we thought the ref said two minutes. . . .” The suspense just built from there.

What did any of this have to do with Super Bowl XX? Everything and nothing.

Brokaw’s “exclusive” White House interview (Reagan never gave Dan Rather or Peter Jennings the poop on “what cleats felt like under your shoes”) was NBC’s way of drawing attention to its anchorman on an afternoon when its audience was expected to be especially super. Co-starring with Reagan couldn’t hurt Brokaw’s credibility. And a cozy TV interview couldn’t hurt the President either.

The orchestrated Brokaw hype and appearance by Reagan added to the phony luster of an event that NBC--in trying to justify its Sunday overkill--repeatedly billed as “an American celebration.”

Media celebration is more like it.

The point is not merely that Sunday’s game failed to match its enormous buildup. Of course, the Chicago Bears’ unthrilling 46-10 romp over the New England Patriots was a disappointment. Even a 46-45 squeaker played by pygmies would not have made any difference, though. World War III could not have lived up to the two-week media crescendo for the Bears and Patriots.

And on game day, NBC waved the Super Bowl like Old Glory.

“Today we unite in an American celebration,” NBC’s usually sensible Dick Enberg announced Sunday. American celebration? Who says?

The Fourth of July is an American celebration. Thanksgiving is an American celebration. Americans walking on the moon are a national celebration. Getting our hostages back from Iran is an American celebration. USA for Africa is an American celebration. The birthdays of George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. are American celebrations.

But the Super Bowl? That’s no American celebration. That’s a marketing phenom, an incredibly successful sales job on Americans to convince us that there is something symbolically patriotic and special about a game between two professional football teams that have played previously and are playing again so that they, the National Football League, TV and sponsors can score a big payday.

It’s the free enterprise system. There’s nothing evil or underhanded about NBC earning a patriotic $550,000 for 30 seconds of Super Bowl air time. Just don’t confuse the Super Bowl with “America, the Beautiful.”

Suddenly, out of the blue, the nation was supposed to care if Walter Payton got his Super Bowl ring? Or if the spirit of late Bears owner George Halas was smiling on New Orleans?

NBC showed football clips while John Cougar Mellencamp asked “ain’t that America?” Where was Springsteen? You’d think that the Super Bowl was created by Norman Rockwell instead of broadcasting and sports smoothies. Maybe we should start celebrating it with turkey and stuffing.

This “uniquely American mosaic,” as Enberg called it, is nothing more than just another uniquely American football telecast, an annual traveling Mardi Gras so promoted and glorified by all the media that Americans watch out of duty or awe. If you’re repeatedly told that something is extraordinary, moreover, you may even watch out of curiosity.

If 100 million Americans did indeed tune in Sunday’s game as was forecast, you can translate them into 100 million yawning suckers. Many of them must have wondered: Is that all there is? Yes. A deafening toot over nothing, just the way satirists Bob and Ray expose absurdity by celebrating trivia.

Bob Costas valiantly tried to keep his tongue in his cheek while hosting the pregame show. But thudding melodrama intervened. . . .

Here was Bill Macatee with the Bears and Patriots on Super Bowl morning: “Time seemed to pass slowly.”

Was Pete Axthelm kidding when he called Bears quarterback Jim McMahon “a young F. Lee Bailey”? He’s not even a young Beetle Bailey.

Didn’t pregaming Bill Cosby realize that he would be the zillionth person to launch an unclever little ditty about William (The Refrigerator) Perry?

And didn’t Rodney Dangerfield realize that his new Tab Hunter hair would get more laughs than his jokes?

Far more arresting was the postgame comment by the Bears’ Richard Dent about Martin Luther King Jr.: “He had a dream, and that’s the dream I had. I dreamed I would be MVP.” Gotcha.

And more funny was Enberg pumping hard for NBC’s Sunday premiere of its whopping “Peter the Great.” He said about the evening: “They’re calling it Sunday the Great and it starts with ‘Punky Brewster. . . .’ ”

Meanwhile, NBC kept its vow to carve a 60-second potty break from its two-hour pregame show. Here’s a better idea for Super Bowl XXI, though: a 60-second pregame break inside a two-hour potty show appropriately leading to yet another heart-stopping “American celebration.”

Until next year, when we do it all again.