9781422283097

“People of Earth, we’ve come ten billion light years to bring you this halftime message of peace!” A n I ntergalactic E vent So says the alien who emerges from his spaceship on the 50‑yard line during halftime of Super Bowl XXVI. Okay, so that didn’t really happen. Instead, it was a scene from The Simpsons , a TV show that specializes in poking fun at some of the biggest pop culture institutions in the world. And there may be no bigger pop culture institution in the galaxy than the Super Bowl. If aliens are out there somewhere, studying the behavior of humans, there’s no doubt the Super Bowl would show up on their radar. The Super Bowl—the National Football League’s annual championship game—has grown into what some consider a national holiday. More than 100 million people in the United States watch the game, with millions more viewers around the world. The biggest names in music perform in the halftime show, celebrities come from

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