Mark Madden: Super Bowl is about more than a football game

The Super Bowl is uniquely American. Many who care little about football watch in the context of it being a social event.

The Monday after should be a national holiday. Call it Joe Namath Day. (More later.)

Never mind the game: The Super Bowl’s peripheral audience is into the commercials, the halftime show and the snacks.

Mentioning any of those can drive sports-talk radio conversation for an hour. Longer, in times of desperation.

My favorite ad: Oprah Winfrey hosts late-night TV icons Jay Leno and David Letterman at a Super Bowl party when Leno and Letterman were at the height of their animosity.

Though it didn’t debut during a Super Bowl, Mean Joe Greene’s jersey-tossing Coke commercial got famous with multiple airings during Super Bowl XIV, a game Greene played in and won.

Bryan Cranston returns as Walter White. Tony Romo plays Carl Spackler. Recycling is a staple.

The best halftime show: The Rolling Stones at Detroit in 2006. Network censors would not permit Mick Jagger to make a dead man climax during “Start Me Up,” but the ageless front man nonetheless never stopped.

In 2009 at Tampa, Bruce Springsteen had the hubris to complain, on mic, that he wasn’t allowed to play longer. As if the second half should be delayed so The Boss could do an encore. Not much is bigger than Springsteen. The Super Bowl is.

Janet Jackson’s breast was revealed during the halftime show at Houston in 2004. Her career ground to a halt. Justin Timberlake, who exposed it, was back headlining the halftime show in 2018. Doesn’t seem fair.

I miss “Up With People” and the college marching bands. Didn’t a dog catch a Frisbee one year?

As for snacks, wings and nachos are required. Everything else is secondary. Beer is the only acceptable beverage.

Block pools are necessities. For years, I was in one that cost $1,000 per block. Never won the final score. Won a few quarters, and one halftime reverse. My net loss was about $6,500. (It’s OK. I can afford it.)

Betting is a must. Exotic props. The crazier, the better.

Bet on the opening kickoff to be a touchback. The odds are -137. Both Kansas City and Philadelphia booted 65% of their kickoffs for touchbacks this season. But last year’s Super Bowl-opening touchback, courtesy of Cincinnati’s Evan McPherson, was the first in five years, second in nine.

But betting on the kickoff, or the coin toss, gets a result right away. Bet more in-game and, with a little bad luck, you could end up homeless by halftime.

My favorite prop bet is backup Philadelphia running back Kenneth Gainwell to get over 19½ yards rushing. The Eagles are 14-0 in games where they top 100 yards rushing. Doing that in the Super Bowl will require all hands on deck, not just starter Miles Sanders.

McPherson, by the way, didn’t go to the Bengals’ locker room during halftime of last year’s Super Bowl. He stayed on the field to watch Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. His coaches were not happy. McPherson is nonetheless still Cincinnati’s kicker.

This year’s game is an undeniably great matchup featuring, almost inarguably, the NFL’s two best teams. Each is 16-3 including playoffs. Each scored exactly 546 points. Each has six All-Pros, including the quarterback. Each was its conference’s No. 1 seed.

The Eagles seem the better team. The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes is the better quarterback. The Eagles’ pass rush got a league-high 70 sacks during the regular season and hurt both San Francisco quarterbacks during the NFC Championship Game. Injuring Mahomes should be a quiet goal, but a priority nonetheless.

This is the 57th Super Bowl, but the first one that mattered was Super Bowl III.

The American Football League champ New York Jets were 19½-point underdogs to NFL winner Baltimore. But Jets quarterback Joe Namath guaranteed victory, then delivered.

Namath made the Super Bowl, and that win greased the skids for the NFL-AFL merger as well as football’s emergence as, by far, America’s No. 1 sport.

The world knows him as “Broadway Joe.” In Pittsburgh, he’s “Beaver Falls Joe,” and that’s just fine by Namath. Football owes him a debt of gratitude to this day.

Everything that happened before that doesn’t count. Like Cleveland’s four NFL championships. HAW, HAW, HAW, HAW!