Everyone can climb aboard the Super Bowl bandwagon

ANYONE can be a quarterback star in Super Bowl week. "Take aim, and just let your arm do the talking," advised the High School coach, drafted in as a dream-maker to the NFL Experience in downtown New Orleans. A couple of seconds later, the alarm bells were ringing and the blue light was flashing. Direct hit. Favre? Bledsoe? Nope, Reid.

Super Bowl XXXI has hit town. It's a city of many nicknames. The home of jazz and the birthplace of Louis Armstrong is tagged as the Crescent City, The City That Care Forgot, the European Queen of the Mississippi and, most aptly, The Big Easy. A good place to visit, apparently not such a good place to live.

"We've had five cab drivers killed here in the past four months," said the taxi driver on the way in from the airport, a touch of reality intruding on the occasion. And what an occasion.

The encounter between the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots in the space age Superdome tomorrow night may be the focal point, but the big game has spawned a huge industry of sideshows.

For instance, the Ernest N Morial Convention Centre on the banks of the Mississippi has been transformed into the NFL Experience, a Disney-like set-up where you can attempt a field goal, punt or toss a ball, meet stars of the past and present, and basically learn anything you need to know about the United States national sport.

All good fun, too, and the NFL Staff coaches at the various disciplines were helpful and encouraging, even to Irish guys who had to be told which way to hold the ball. No doubt word of my quarterback prowess will make its way back to coaches Bill Parcells (New England) and Mike Holmgren (Green Bay).

New Orleans - or, as the locals say, N'Awlins - knows how to play host to Super Bowl. They have done it on seven previous occasions and, while the Superdome is a magnificent indoor arena, the city actually holds the distinction of the coldest Super Bowl ever played, not at its current venue but at Tulane Stadium in 1972 when temperatures were just above freezing.

Everywhere, however, the Super Bowl party is evident.

Downtown, an invasion of "Cheeseheads" has taken place. A regional insult about America's dairyland has been turned into a symbol of Wisconsin pride by supporters of the Green Bay Packers who wear 15-inch triangles of foam that look like swiss cheeses. At 519.95 a hat, an idea which started out four years' ago as a joke for one Packers fan, Ralph Bruno, has made him into a millionaire.

In the wee hours of yesterday morning, Bourbon Street in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter, an area where sounds of the blues abound - was a heaving mass of Packers supporters with their odd-looking cheesehats.

Equally in evidence among the Packers supporters are replica number four jerseys bearing the name of Brett Favre, the man expected to be the star of the show tomorrow night. His home village of Kiln, Mississippi, which boasts two petrol stations, a post office, one church and one bar, has been invaded by journalists from all over America this week, scouring the field where the quarterback learnt his trade.

Super Bowl XXXI is big business. A 30-second advertisement on Fox television during the match costs 51.2 million and corporate America is tapping into the huge interest in the game. Everywhere you turn, some major company is trying to ride the coat-tails of the Super Bowl: you can have a beer at the Bud Bowl, or get autographs at the Sega NFL Players Party.

Even the half-time show promises to be an experience in itself. Normally, the half-time break in a match is 12 minutes but, due to the extravagance of the Super Bowl Show, which will feature more than 1,100 local participants, the break tomorrow will last precisely 22 minutes.

Billed as a "Blues Brothers Bash," it will star James Brown, ZZ Top and the current version of the Blues Brothers, actors Jim Belushi, John Goodman and Dan Aykroyd. The pre-game show will feature country singer Mary Chapin Carpenter and Luther Vandross and, besides these headliners, the show will also include 500 dancers and 100 Harley Davidson bikers. Who said it was just a football game?

The game is being televised live to 150 countries and will be broadcast in 11 languages: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Flemish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish.

In all, 3,000 journalists have been issued with credentials. Thee days when the Super Bowl, was solely an American experience have well and truly gone.