Word: superealism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Through its sophisticated and expensive techniques, television has forged a football game into the nation's single largest shared experience (except for electing a President or watching American astronauts walk on the moon). The Super Bowl has made other contributions to the culture too, footnotes not to be lost. In 1967, The Game was responsible for the release of 4,000 pigeons in flight over the crowd, an exercise that produced history's most massive precision drill: the simultaneous holding of souvenir programs over 63,036 heads. Other wonders: a 30-foot statue of a Green Bay Packer snorting smoke...
...opening kickoff. They include Americans in Europe who jet into Frankfurt to watch the game in German hotels that pirate the American Forces Network's signal. In Korea, 40,000 troops worry less about Panmunjom Truce Session CCCLXXXIII than the 5:30 a.m. live color broadcast of the Super Bowl...
Back home, Super Bowl mania takes even stranger forms. Boston Political Journalist Richard Gaines will be one of the few on the telephone during the game. (Long-distance calls dropped 50% in Pittsburgh last year while the Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys.) Gaines watches the contest alone, but exchanges opinions via phone with a select coterie of fellow Super Bowl junkies. Says Gaines: "I always know exactly what plays will make the phone ring and who will be on the line." His Super Bowl record: all three hours on long distance...
...rooms of the maternity floor. Before that inspired move, fathers-to-be delayed bringing their wives to the hospital until the game had ended. How long between contractions? One slant off-tackle, an end-around, two passes and a penalty. When the Kansas City Chiefs played in the 1970 Super Bowl, the home-town police had one-quarter the usual number of Sunday-morning calls and just one crime, a burglary; they waited until half-time to question the suspect. The Kansas City Power and Light Co. turned on 15 million extra watts of power to run the city...
Dawson was cleared, but betting remains very much on the minds of Super Bowl fans. Super Bowl means time to put the money down, whether it is for $1 office pools or high-roller stakes. It is the biggest day of the year for bookies; estimates of the amount wagered range as high as $260 million. At the Stardust Lounge in Las Vegas, where Super Bowl betting is done legally, fans flock to the windows. Says the lounge's manager: "They'll come here out of the cracks of walls?from Texas, the Midwest, everywhere?to watch the game...