What If He’d Eaten a Sausage Biscuit or Waffles Instead?
Sam Venable
Department of Irony
Super Bowl LVI kicks off this month in Inglewood, California. Already, I’m up to my chinstrap in statistics.
First are athletic stats.
Spare me more drivel about yards-per-carry, passes-attempted-completed, TDs, interceptions, field goals, quarterback sacks, blah-blah-blah compiled all season. Enough of this verbiage has been generated to overflow SoFi Stadium, where the game is scheduled to be played.
Spare me non-jock stats, as well.
I don’t care who’s singing the National Anthem or performing at halftime or what politicians and movie stars might, or might not, attend.
I’m not all that interested in commercial stats, either. Now that these gazillion-dollar blurbs may be viewed in advance, their surprise effect has been muted to a deafening ho-hum.
Nonetheless, I’d love to see a Super Bowl ad dedicated to cornflakes.
Other than a Cheerios spot four or five years ago, breakfast cereal has largely been ignored by Super Bowl advertisers. What a golden opportunity they’re missing!
If not for cornflakes, the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy—which is awarded to the winning team and hoisted aloft by grinning players, coaches and owners as confetti flickers down—might never have been conceived.
I came across this nugget of trivia while attempting to stem the tsunami of Super Bowl info spewing out of my computer. At first, I thought it was fake news. But the longer I researched, the more I was bowled over. Cereal-bowled over, as it were.
Seems that back in 1966, when then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was contemplating a suitable trophy for the first “super” championship, he contacted Tiffany & Co. Execs at the New York jewelry emporium gave the assignment to Oscar Reidner, head of design.
Just one itty-bitty problem.
Reidner was totally unfamiliar with the game; he’d never even held a football. So he stopped at a sporting goods store on the way home from work and bought one.
Reidner considered several plans that night, apparently to no avail. He still was scratching his noggin the next morning. He poured some cornflakes and sat down to munch.
He looked at the football. He looked at the box of cornflakes. Hmmm.
He reached for a sharp knife, performed quick surgery, and placed the ball at an angle atop the base of the box.
Ta-dah!
A few days later, Reidner and Rozelle met for lunch. Reidner sketched his design on a cocktail napkin. And an icon was born.
(No mention if Rozelle leaped to his feet and shouted, “Hey! That’s grrrreeEAATT!”)
Sam Venable is an author, comedic entertainer, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. His latest book is “The Joke’s on YOU! (All I Did Was Clean Out My Files).” He may be reached at sam.venable@outlook.com.