It's Super Bowl Sunday at last.
The one thing I always remember at Super Bowl time is how many games there have been.
This is Super Bowl XLIV, which means it is the 44th Super Bowl. I am 44 years old so I get reminded of my age every Super Bowl.
I know, I know, I don't look a day over Super Bowl XXV, but it's true.
Fellow staff writer Michael Thomason and I often lament that when we were young and there had only been about 10 Super Bowls, networks could show all the highlights from past Super Bowls in a few hours.
Heck, now it would take nearly a full day to show 30-minute highlight shows from each Super Bowl.
When I was a kid, I had a book that recounted the first 10 Super Bowls. I read that book over and over.
I knew everything there was to know about the first 10 Super Bowls.
The first one was in Los Angeles on a beautiful 72-degree day, however there were about 30,000 empty seats. The first Super Bowl just wasn't that big of a deal.
Green Bay Packers receiver Max McGhee, a 34-year-old backup, came off the bench to make a bunch of crazy catches in the Packer's route of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Some say the Super Bowl really didn't take off until Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath's famous prediction came true and his New York Jets upset the three-touchdown favorite Baltimore Colts.
But over the years, the Super Bowls all blend together to me now. It seems like the pre-game and halftime shows are bigger than the games. The commercials certainly are.
And to ward off another Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, the entertainment producers usually dig up some band from a nursing home that my wife has never heard of.
I'll spend 30 minutes of halftime telling Marie who The Who is/was.
"Who?" She'll ask.
Then she'll make me turnover to some cooking show or a 2006 re-run of  "The Deadliest Catch."
If I am lucky, I might see the end of the game just in time to see Peyton Manning hit Dallas Clark for a 16-yard touchdown and the Colt's game-winning score.
Yeah, that's my prediction and I've got to live with it in print.
But it's Super Bowl Sunday and we all get to bury our troubles for a while in the bright aura of big-screen TV's and potato chips.
tommy.millsaps@advocateanddemocrat.com | 337-7101