Plans for Super Bowl XXVII No Mere Castle Made of Sand

It’s not too early to be thinking about Super Bowl XXVII, to be played next year in Pasadena.

Host committee organizers are already hard at work in Minneapolis, counting down the days to the Jan. 31, 1993, event in the Rose Bowl.

And how hard are they working? Well, so far they have erected a 4-by-10-foot sand sculpture of the Rose Bowl at the Super Bowl headquarters hotel in Minneapolis.

Add XXVII: For $2,500, a special Super Bowl package includes pregame and postgame dining and entertainment in the private NFL Corporate Hospitality Village, a ticket to the game, VIP parking, a pregame chalk talk by an NFL coach and a limited edition print designed by an artist commissioned for the event.

Trivia time: How many times before this year’s Winter Olympics in Albertville have the Winter Games been held in France?

Showtime: This year’s Super Bowl halftime show will feature a 60-piece symphony orchestra, 375 dancers, 30 gymnasts, four 30-foot inflatable snowmen, a 350-member drill team, a 150-piece drum and bugle corps, electric lights, smoke and 3,000 balloons that will be dropped from the ceiling.

Like father . . . Legendary Kenyan distance runner Kip Keino, 52, and his 19-year-old son, Martin, will compete in the Sunkist Invitational indoor track meet Feb. 15 at the Sports Arena. The elder Keino will race in the Masters mile, and the younger Keino, a sophomore at Arizona, will run in the open mile.

Ouch: Here is how Inside Sports magazine’s The Good Doctor answers a question concerning whether anybody in San Jose knows anything about hockey. “They know enough that they’ll probably win a Stanley Cup before the Los Angeles Kings ever do.”

Ice cold: With 18 goals, the Kings’ Wayne Gretzky is on pace for a 32-goal season. Gretzky, who was absent for five games when his father became ill, has never scored fewer than 40 goals.

13 of a kind: Warming up for their busiest week of the year, vice squad police raided 15 New York gambling parlors last week and arrested 13 suspected organized crime figures. The raids were called “Operation Kings Flush.”

Don’t hold your breath: The waiting list for season tickets to Washington Redskin games has 44,000 names.

Trivia answer: Twice before, 1924 in Chamonix and 1968 in Grenoble.

Quotebook: Washington Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs, on what he told his younger players to expect during Super Bowl week: “It’s like a fire drill. I said the good news is that we’re going to the Super Bowl. I said the bad news is that we’re going to the Super Bowl. It’s a madhouse.”