Buffaloed by the Stupor Bowl . . .

What can be more exciting than the savage ballet that is pro football?

--Lisa Simpson, age 8, on “The Simpsons.”

The strategy. The action. The violence. The athleticism. The offense. The defense. The camaraderie. The cheering crowd. The spirit of competition. The huge television audience. The enormous financial stakes. The euphoria of victory, the agony of defeat.

Yes, the Bud Bowl has everything.

Everything except as much drooling hype as the NFL championship event that it annually shadows.

Actually, the two are soul mates. Run during the last several Super Bowls, Budweiser beer’s once-a-year grating, cockamamie advertising campaign simulates a football game between Bud and Bud Light. The Super Bowl simulates significance.

Both the Bud Bowl and the Super Bowl are creations of Madison Avenue.

One of these days, some Wunderkind of advertising will get a bright idea and we’ll see a swollen publicity campaign for the next ultimate championship game: The Super Bowl winner playing the winner of Bud vs. Light. And, if tradition serves, we’ll fall for it.

The absurdity of the Bud Bowl and the fervor and inflated obesity of the Super Bowl itself (Sunday’s CBS telecast begins at 3 p.m.) were captured magnificently on Thursday’s hilarious episode of “The Simpsons” on Fox. The story found that football-watching slug Homer “bonding” with his 8-year-old daughter, Lisa, on Sundays--out of self-interest, as usual.

With precocious Lisa picking the weekly NFL winners, the usually hapless Homer was making an unaccustomed bundle by betting on the games. In addition to some grand parodies of Brent Musburger, Jimmy the Greek and sportscasting in general, “The Simpsons” presented its own version of the Super Bowl telecast, with the Redskins winning the game on the field and Duff Dry winning the Duff Bowl in the Duff Beer commercial.

“The Simpsons” has never met a self-important target it couldn’t skewer, and this episode--titled “Lisa the Greek”--was no exception.

It’s somehow appropriate that Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast on CBS caps a TV week that features a loony syndicated program on Elvis sightings, carried Wednesday by KTLA Channel 5--what do you think, was The King really an undercover FBI agent who is still alive?--and Saturday’s repeat (at 9 p.m. on KTTV Channel 11) of Fox’s doozy special on UFO sightings. Hmmmm. Maybe Elvis himself was an alien mole, a creature from another planet sent here to infiltrate Nashville.

The Super Bowl has its own surreal qualities. From one end of the globe to the other, the fabulous multitudes with short memories will again cluster in front of TV sets Sunday, zombies convened by a subliminal siren, expecting to be thrilled and transfixed, ignoring the Super Bowl’s inglorious history of largely producing stuporous contests. This gathering of amnesiacs will affirm that the public has again been suckered by the relentless Super Bowl sales pitch, and that it’s not only Elvis seekers who will believe anything.

The Super Bowl is the Zsa Zsa Gabor of sports, an event that’s famous because it’s famous. Really now, how many people outside of the cities themselves actually care whether the Buffalo Bills or Washington Redskins win in Minneapolis Sunday? Are you really biting your nails over this one? Before the 1992 Super Bowl buildup began, moreover, how many even could recall the winner of the 1991 Super Bowl? (It was the New York Giants, who edged Buffalo when the Persian Gulf War was in brief remission.)

The master-marketers of the Super Bowl have made you think you care.

They’ve achieved this by disguising their creature in the red, white and blue vestments of the World Series and attaching it to Roman numerals (this is Super Bowl XXVI, don’t forget)--as if this 800-pound monster of the midway was inscribed in stone a la the Ten Commandments.

The first commandment of promotion is “Thou Shalt Blitz.” So, attention Super Bowl slaves. A word from cable’s sports network, whose anchors and reporters have been gorging on this event as if they were feudal lords chomping on legs of mutton: “Can you survive this Super Bowl Sunday Marathon? Take the challenge on ESPN!” Or take the challenge on Fox, which is counterprogramming the Super Bowl halftime with a live, football-themed episode of “In Living Color.”

Game reminders are everywhere, not only in sports pages and sportscasts but also in the lucrative marketing of products attendant to the event.

From Roman numeral to Roman numeral, the product strategy rarely changes. Thus, not only can you watch Super Bowl XXVI, you can wear it. On a recent evening, cable’s QVC shopping network offered Item No. A-7798, the ultimate apparel metaphor for the Bills and Redskins butting heads: Yes, the incredible, astonishing, absolutely indispensable, machine-washable “clashing helmets sweat shirt.”

The orders poured in. As a prelude to the game itself, Homer Simpsons everywhere were biting.