The Super Flush -- and Other Bowl Game Myths

The Super Bowl has become as much a part of Americana as Thanksgiving turkey. Like a national holiday, the game even has its own day named after it: Super Bowl Sunday. And just like the myths surrounding Thanksgiving, the stories surrounding this annual football game continue to swell with a life of their own.

Yet the game has been around only since 1967. Then again, in turbocharged America, that is enough time to become an institution with a core of beliefs. For example, we believe:

* At half-time, water pressure drops in many cities from so many toilets flushing.

This is a wonderfully loony myth, but it didn’t start with football. I first encountered this toilet-flush tale reading about Milton Berle. His popularity on Tuesday nights when television was in its infancy was so great that when his show ended at 9 p.m., everyone would rush to the bathroom after being glued to their sets. Hence, the flushing of the waters.

* Enraged men beat up their spouses after watching the violence of the game.

Even some respected journalists have gone along with this man-bashing propaganda. It originates in a very small 1990 university study that purported that battered women sought shelter at a higher rate after Washington Redskins’ games. This study somehow morphed into a nationwide epidemic of wife-beating. It reached its zenith of popular belief before the Super Bowl 11 years ago, when feminist groups held a news conference to decry the coming violence, then slowly slipped away when it was apparent that men were no nastier on Sundays than other days.

* Restaurants are empty.

I did my own research on this during one of the early Super Bowls. My paper sent me out to Times Square to determine whether this was valid. Being on an expense account, a colleague and I went to a strip club. The proprietor, a fellow named Moose, said, “Look around, do you see anyone watching television?” I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) argue with him. I subsequently called a couple of business groups across the country and found that business was still good on Super Bowl Sunday.

And now for a bit of arcana. Did you know there was no Super Bowl I or II? These affairs were known, simply, as “the world championship game.” The grandiose Roman numbers were grandfathered in for the 1971 game, or Super Bowl V. The 1969 Jets-Colts game was known as just the Super Bowl. In fact, tickets for this game ($12 each) were printed far in advance with the words “Third World Championship Game.” As the game neared, though, it was transformed into the Super Bowl. Even now, in the Jets’ locker room, the gleaming Lombardi Trophy sits in its case inscribed with “World Championship.”

As for the super name: The Texas-born daughter of the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, Lamar Hunt, was playing with her high-bounce ball.

“That’s my Super Bo-all,” she said in her Texas twang. Hunt was smitten with the idea, submitted it to his fellow owners -- “It gives the game more dignity,” he told them -- and the Super Bowl was born, three years after it began.