Super Bowl XXXVII

The game is big; so are the tales

Sorry, but all those Super Bowl urban myths just aren't true.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 24, 2003

Blame the Super Bowl for the lines this weekend at the deli counter. Blame it for disrupting the diet that was supposed to start this month. Blame it, if you want, for the attention it saps from issues like war and peace.

But do not hold it accountable for the back-up in your toilet, or the summary execution of 260-million avocados, or the change in next quarter's 401(k) statement, or the domestic dispute at the house down the street.

The Super Bowl is big, just not as big -- or as bad -- as believers in urban myths would have the rest of us believe. Several legends about the Super Bowl's effect on American society were debunked years ago, but that hasn't kept them from persisting.

The gravest one -- the notion that more women are attacked at home on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year -- is false. There is no research to support the claim, said Linda Osmundson, executive director of CASA, a spouse abuse shelter in St. Petersburg.

"A person who is inclined to be abusive will use any number of excuses; the Super Bowl is as good as any," she said. "If she didn't prepare the right meal on Super Bowl Sunday, she might be in trouble. Then again, if she didn't prepare the right meal on Saturday, she might be in trouble, too."

Whatever the day, CASA's 30-bed shelter is full but always able to accommodate more, Osmundson said.

The myth got its start before the 1993 Super Bowl when a coalition of women's groups held a news conference to proclaim that Super Bowl Sunday was "the biggest day of the year for violence against women."

The group cited a study that found a 40 percent increase in beatings and hospital admissions among women in northern Virginia after Washington Redskins games.

Word spread as most of the media reported the claims without viewing the study.

But Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle checked with the study's author, Old Dominion University professor Janet Katz, who told him, "That's not what we found at all."

The study found that the rate of attacks on local women increased slightly after Redskins victories, but not at a rate close to 40 percent. It suggested that attacks might arise from male feelings of "empowerment" after a win, but that was "very tentative," Katz said, and nothing close to what the coalition claimed.

Missing the mark just as badly is the claim that the halftime rush to the restroom on Super Bowl Sunday creates a strain on the nation's sewer systems.

"It just doesn't happen," said Patti Anderson, St. Petersburg's director of public utilities. Even for big events at Tropicana Field, officials see only a "little blip" in water use, and much of that is from people starting their evening routines, Anderson said.

The city's system typically handles 35-million gallons a day, but it's designed to handle twice that, she said.

Another myth -- that the Super Bowl outcome will determine the fate of the stock market -- also is more fancy than fact.

Legend has it that the market rises in the year when the victor is a team from the original NFL and that it declines if the winner hails from the old American Football League, which merged with the NFL in 1970.

Market observers are uncertain of what to do with teams such as the Bucs, which came along after the merger. The formula is said to be accurate 80 percent of the time, but most analysts dismiss it as an amazing coincidence.

Even as the Investopedia.com Web site promotes the phenomenon as its "Super Bowl indicator," it adds, "We wouldn't bet the farm on it."

As for the avocado myth? Total mush.

Somewhere, the idea took hold that two-thirds of the nation's annual consumption of avocados occurred on Super Bowl Sunday. Americans like their avocados, but the myth would have them eating a stomach-churning 260-million pounds of them in one day.

The figure last year was more like 13-million pounds, which came in second to the 27-million pounds consumed on Cinco de Mayo, according to the California Avocado Commission.

This year the commission will include imported as well as domestic avocados in its count, so the Super Bowl estimate for 2003 will rise to 40-million pounds.

As it happens, this year's Super Bowl site, San Diego, is the nation's avocado capital. This has prompted the commission to calculate that 40-million pounds makes enough guacamole to cover Qualcomm Stadium's football field, 5 feet deep.

And that's a fact.