*foot notes

The Super Bowl is just a game. But through the mass-media marketing of the National Football League, Super Bowl Sunday has become a great excuse for throwing a party even for people who don’t know the difference between a touchdown and a home run.

The Super Bowl is also a major television event. Fifteen of the top 30 most-watched television programs of all time are Super Bowls. The highest rated Super Bowl of all time? The 1982 matchup of the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals scored a 49 share, which translated to about 40 million households.

* Regulars like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi-Cola, Federal Express and about a dozen Internet companies are paying the highest prices ever this year for TV commercials during the Super Bowl. ABC officials say the price for a 30-second spot during the big game has jumped to an average of $2.2 million--about $73,333 per second--up 38% from last year. The top price for an ad was more than $3 million. Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of Budweiser, is the biggest Super Bowl advertiser, with five full minutes during the game.

* Both teams in this year’s game are newly arrived in their respective cities--the Titans from Houston and the Rams from here in Southern California. The Rams were founded in 1937 in Cleveland, Ohio, where they won their first world championship in 1945. Soon afterward, they high-tailed it to Los Angeles, where they were fixtures for nearly 50 years. With a pair of Hall of Fame quarterbacks--Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin--the Rams won their last world championship in 1951. Other Hall of Famers who played for the Rams in Los Angeles include Merlin Olsen, David “Deacon” Jones, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch and Dick “Night Train” Lane.

* If football and hoopla and television and parties are definitely not your thing, the Topanga Canyon Docents will lead a two-hour Winter Adventure Walk at 1 p.m. Sunday in Topanga State Park. Meet at the kiosk in the park parking lot on Entrada Road off Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Call (310) 535-9400.