Finally – Super Bowl 50.

For some of us, it’s hard to imagine the Super Bowl has been around for fifty years.  Seems everyone loves to watch the Super Bowl, so in Kowalski Heat Treating fashion, we thought we’d give you some Super Bowl Trivia (SBT) trivia to use during the game parties, along with some “oh yea, But Did You Know” (BDYK) come back “Cliff Claven Style” nuggets to really impress.  Enjoy!

SBT:  Super Bowl 50 will feature Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers vs. Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos.
BDYK:  Newton became just the third player to win the Heisman Trophy, a College National Championship and be the NFL’s No. 1 overall pick in the same academic year. (other two are Leon Hart ’50-Notre Dame/Detroit Lions and Angelo Bertelli-Notre Dame/Los Angeles Dons ’44).  Peyton Manning, also chosen #1, wears #18 in honor of his older brother Cooper who he idolized in HS, and comes from a quarterback family – Dad Archie, New Orleans Saints, originally drafted for pro baseball, and his #1 NFL pick brother Eli Manning of the NY Giants).

SBT:  Odds: The Panthers are favored by 4.5 points with the over/under set at 45 points.
BDYK:  The largest spread was 18 points when the SF 49ers met the SD Chargers in SB 29.  The 49ers covered it with ease as Steve Young threw six touchdowns, a SB record, and San Francisco blew out San Diego 49-26 – the teams’ 75 total points is still a SB record.

SBT:  It’s estimated Americans will consume 1.5 billion chicken wings. (Yes, billion!) Don’t worry I do my part!
BDYK:  The creation of “Buffalo Wings” (1964) was at the Anchor Bar on Main Street in Buffalo, NY-when Teressa Bellissiomo threw left over wings into hot oil, doused them with Franks Hot Sauce and butter, and served them with blue cheese dip to cool the heat.  Today, Chef Ivano Toscani, a classic collector car and motorcycle buff, keeps the tradition alive, serving 4-5,000 pounds of wings each day.

SBT:  The Super Bowl is second highest snack day to Thanksgiving. Wings are #1, followed by pizza (50 million orders), chips (12 million pounds), pretzels (5 million pounds, and over 120 million pounds of avocado dip, followed by salsa and candy.
BDYK:  The Snickers bar was named by Franks Mars after his favorite horse;  Pringles chips only contain about 42% potatoes, and a typical serving of avocado (100 g) is moderate to rich in vitamins B, K, C, E and potassium – known to help resist drunken Broncos fans.

SBT:  It’s estimated over 325 million gallons of beer will be consumed during the game.
BDYK:  It’s also estimated over 7 million people will not show up for work on Monday.

SBT:  First teams to play: Green Bay Packer v Kansas City Chiefs.
BDYK:  No network footage exists of Super Bowl I. It was taped over, supposedly for a soap opera.  Most recently, the game has been “recreated” by NFL films, pasting together all 135 plays from original film footage recovered in the archives – now called SB 1 – “The Lost Game”

SBT:  A 2016 :30 commercial costs about $5 million, and about $1 million to make.
BDYK:  The first super bowl game was actually simulcast on CBS and NBC at the same time.  Back then, TV commercials only cost about $40,000 each for an audience of about 51 million viewers.  Pepsi owns the Top 10 “Best Ever Commercials” honors (six times) with the #1 best ever in ‘95 when a little boy (Jake Schuttler) gets sucked into a Pepsi bottle. Jake went on to be an actor and star in a ’96 movie called Mother.

SBT:  Coldest Super Bowl – 39 degrees in New Orleans 1972
BDYK:  Classic coldest NFL football game on record – Green Bay vs Dallas ‘67 – Bart Star keeps ball to score winning touchdown (-13 degrees, wind chill -30+).

SBT:  Coin flip history – 24 heads, 25 tails – and one of the most popular SB sports bets.
BDYK:  Craziest coin flip ever – when a dead woman (Katherine Dunton), who had just died of cancer in 2006, won re-election to a school board in rural Alaska after her opponent (Dona Highstone), called heads and lost a coin flip meant to break a tie.

SBT:  First player to say “I’m going to Disney World was Phil Simms in 1987.
BDYK:  Simms wasn’t being candid (he was paid $75,000.)   Jane Eisner, the wife of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, supposedly concocted the idea.  And, the unseen voice posing the question is Mark Champion, currently a popular radio play-by-play voice in Detroit.

SBT:  Pittsburgh, Dallas and now Denver will each have appeared in SB 8 times.
BDYK:  Cleveland fans still hate Pittsburgh, followed by Dallas and Denver – coincidence?  (Yankees too!)