Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check

Super Bowl 45, annoying hype and all:

Super Bowl 45 (Yeah, we know --XLV in Roman numerals) cranks up Sunday with kickoff time at 6:28 pm (Eastern) between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. The Packers are a two-and-a-half-point favorite and the over-under is 45.
   CHRISTINA AGUILERA sings the National Anthem; THE BLACK EYED PEAS do halftime; Pre-game entertainment includes KEITH URBAN and MAROON 5; "America the Beautiful" will be sung by LEA MICHELE of "Glee." Commercials are costing advertisers an average of $3 million per 30 second shot.
   The game's on FOX, so that's JOE BUCK doing play-by-play and TROY AIKMAN will be providing color commentary. And *surprise* --a special edition of "Glee" follows the broadcast. Yeah, right.

Super Sidebars:

   --The Vince Lombardi Trophy is one of the most recognizable prizes in all of sports. So how much does it cost? It's one of the less-inspired creations of Tiffany & Company in New York. Still, at $12-thousand, it's a bargain. The NFL buys the winning team 150 rings at $5-thousand a pop. Even the losing team gets 125 pieces of jewelry. Can you imagine showing that off to your friends? "Hey guys, here's the silver locket I won for losing the Super Bowl!"

Top 5 pizza sales days are:

5. New Year's Day
4. The night before Thanksgiving
3. Halloween
2. New Year's Eve
1. Super Bowl Sunday

Top-10 snack foods in the U-S, ranked by sales:

With the Super Bowl upon us, might as well stock up on munchies:
10. Party Mix
9. Ready-to-eat popcorn
8. Meat Snacks
7. Corn chips
6. Extruded snacks (I don't know what they are, but they sound nasty) OK... actually they're stuff like Cheetos, Cheez puffs or anything that's made from batter, pushed out of a tube and then baked.
5. Microwavable popcorn
4. Pretzels
3. snack nuts
2. tortilla chips
1. potato chips

Biggest blowouts in the Super Bowl:

5. LA Raiders beat the Washington Redskins by 29 points in 1984, 38-9.
4. Washington Redskins beat the Denver Broncos by 32 points in 1988, 42-10.
3. Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills by 35 points in 1993, 52-17.
2. Chicago Bears beat the New England Patriots by 36 points in 1986, 46-10.
1. SF 49ers beat the Denver Broncos by 45 points in 1990, 55-10.

Super Bowl Myths & Rumor Control:

You've heard of some of these. Snopes.com tackles them with more detailed information but here's one of the short answers.
Claim: Sewage systems of major cities have broken due to the tremendous number of toilets being flushed simultaneously at halftime.
   Status: False. Rumors of the havoc wreaked by widespread simultaneous toilet flushing after popular broadcast events (such as the final episode of TV's M*A*S*H in 1983) have been spread for decades, dating as far back as the 1930s Amos 'n' Andy radio program.