From its modest beginnings at the AFL-NFL Championship Game in Los Angeles in 1967, through to this year’s Super Bowl XLIV, Super Sunday has grown exponentially and, in the process, has become a bloated monster. Over the past quarter century or so, Super Sunday has illustrated the ability of a sporting event to offer a distorted and exaggerated version of social reality and social values in America, and it has done so on a grand, glorious and obscene scale.

It is difficult to say precisely when the Super Bowl reached larger-than-life proportions, but certainly by the end of the 1970s it was there. At Super Bowl XV in 1981, a New York Times headline claimed that 70,000 fans made “New Orleans Throb with Super Bowl Mania.” Gerald Eskenazi’s account described a “gridlock” of people in the French Quarter and an influx of “tens of millions” of dollars into the New Orleans economy.

The extravagances of the fans and everyone associated with the game had reached extraordinary proportions. Only the vocabulary created by Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian-American economist who tracked the habits of the rich in the late 19th century, was capable of fully capturing the scene with such brilliant phrases as “conspicuous consumption,” “conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous waste.”

The fact that all of this takes place around a football game would have delighted Veblen, who once observed that football is to education as bullfighting is to agriculture. Indeed, Veblen’s use of the phrases “predatory barbarism,” “pecuniary emulation” and “vicarious consumption” also seem particularly well suited to any description of our distinctive national holiday.

One of the most common measures of excess has been the price of commercial time. At the first Super Bowl, a 30-second commercial sold for $42,500 on CBS and $37,500 on NBC (both networks broadcast the game). By the early 80’s, the price for 30 seconds reached $400,000, and by the end of the decade it was a whopping $800,000. Thirty seconds of advertising reached the $1 million mark in 1995 and climbed to $2.1 million in 2000. In 2007, the price tag was $2.6 million, and estimates for this year range from $2.6 to $3 million.

The first claims of a positive economic impact on the host city were made for Miami at the second Super Bowl. Hotels sold out for the first time in mid-January, normally a quiet season following the holidays. Eastern Airlines reported brisk business as it took part in package tours. The best restaurants had waiting lists, while the vendors at the game expected record sales from the sellout crowd.

Super Bowl V in Miami was the first game officially designated by Roman numerals (the numerals also appeared on the tickets), although Roman numerals were used on the official logo for Super Bowl II. In the press, the term “Super Bowl” was used from the beginning.

The commissioner’s party in the Imperial Age of Pete Rozelle became one of the biggest and most opulent events, as well as the most sought after party invitations of the festival. After a modest beginning, it quickly outgrew the capacity of any mere hotel ballroom. This led to some magnificent event venues. At Super Bowl VII in Los Angeles, the commissioner played host aboard the Queen Mary. At Super Bowl VIII in Houston, the party occupied the expanse of the Astrodome and included a giant barbecue, with pigs roasting on spits. Commissioner’s parties in Miami were held at Hialeah Racetrack and at Miami Airport’s International Terminal, just prior to its opening. For that venue, the NFL hired 600 musicians from 14 Caribbean nations.

The cost of the 1978 NFL party was $75,000, a figure that drew some critical comment. Pete Rozelle responded to critics — and unintentionally proved their point — by noting that it may be fashionable to knock money and the Super Bowl, but “you think about money all the time with the Super Bowl, more than any other sports event. That’s because it’s a one-shot event.”

An Oakland Raider executive was closer to the mark: “The measurement of what it means is this: It’s the victory. It’s the cult of Number Oneism.”

The number and size of the parties have grown over the years, and in some circles the commissioner’s bash has been eclipsed by the ESPN Party, the Playboy Party and the Maxim Party.

Super Bowl VII in L.A. in 1973 offered the first major signs of the merging of business and the Super Bowl. Salesmen were there as rewards for their prowess, in what The New York Times called “the perfect marriage of sports and commerce that the National Football League’s Championship game has become.” Product tie-ins became commonplace; Sears sold sweaters and pajamas, bed spreads, pennants and posters.

At the public level, excess has always been a part of the scene. For Super Bowl XXII in San Diego, a Super Salad was tossed in Tijuana. It was a 14-foot long, 8-foot wide, and 18-inch deep Caesar salad made from 840 heads of romaine lettuce, 1,400 ounces of garlic oil, 175 lemons, 350 cups of croutons, 980 ounces of parmesan cheese and 840 eggs.

Arriving in Minneapolis for Super Bowl XXVI, visitors to the Twin Cities were greeted at the airport by pianists playing four grand pianos. In downtown Minneapolis, 25 tons of heated sand were dumped in the International Market Square to accommodate 500 people for a beach party. Veblen would have savored this example of the reversal of nature. A sister party was hosted by former Washington Redskin running back John Riggins in Cancun, Mexico.

Corporate America followed suit with its parties and tents. In 1985, at Super Bowl XIX in Palo Alto, Calif., 26 of the nation’s largest corporations set up tents for pre- and post-game parties costing from $250 to $350 per person.

Some 200 corporations took part in the Super Bowl XXX celebration. Large corporations flew in hundreds of employees and spent up to $5 million. Smaller companies wined and dined clients at five-figure costs. There were 35 corporate tents set up in Miami near the stadium for Super Bowl XXX. When this practice began in 1984 there were 12 tents in Tampa. Bigger is better, and better will never be big enough.

By 2001, if you didn’t arrive by private jet for the Super Bowl, why come at all? It is estimated that more than 1,000 private jets landed at the several airports in the Tampa Bay area starting on Super Thursday. This was double the number of private and corporate jets that arrived for College Basketball’s Final Four in 1999.

If private planes and helicopters seemed too plebeian, then “Silent Wings II” offered an alternative. This modest 104-foot yacht featured a staff of four, including a gourmet chef, and “his” and “her” bathrooms in the largest of the suites. Included in the deal were six luxury suite tickets to the big game and a chauffeured Rolls-Royce. The cost? A modest $100,000. The Super Bowl was consistently the priciest event in Sportsworld, and of course worth every tax-deductible dollar.

A former prostitute once told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Pimps see the Super Bowl as a moneymaking opportunity delivered by God.” From special service in the private suites to the halftime quickie, the demand side of the economic equation is highly active. Successful executives on corporate expense accounts display their macho and their cash to grateful clients. New Orleans may be the best Super Bowl city in this respect, but places like Scottsdale, Ariz., advertised 25 escort services, and in Minneapolis, escort services offered a 10 percent discount for the Super Bowl. South Beach will certainly not be found lacking in this respect.

By the 1970s, social analysts were examining Super Bowl rituals. Warren Farrell, author of “The Liberated Man,” a study of masculinity in America published in 1974, found men would watch, analyze and critique the game and be ready on Monday to display their expertise in the office. Farrell pointed to a linkage within “a closed circuit effect” which ties “televised professional football, masculinity, anxiety, sexism, patriotism, religion and war,” and to question any element in the circuit is to risk having your masculinity questioned. A “mini-all-male club” has been created where women serve as water-boys bringing in the beer and chips.

In times of national crisis, patriotism is put on excessive display. There is nothing else quite like a super-sized American flag covering the entire football field while jet fighters or stealth bombers buzz the stadium at the conclusion of the national anthem.

The halftime show is one of the few areas where the Super Bowl has come up short, as it usually features a musical group whose popularity has long since passed its peak. This makes some sense, however, since it provides musical nostalgia for the current generation of successful business executives who populate the Super Bowl scene.

To me, the greatest pre-game and halftime combination occurred in 1993 in Pasadena, when O.J. Simpson handled the coin toss, and Michael Jackson performed at halftime. Who knew then what a marvelous and historic daily double this would be? And of course Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake will live forever in Super Bowl lore for introducing “wardrobe malfunction” into everyday American speech.

If Tim Tebow’s Miracle commercial sponsored by Focus on the Family has you wondering about the mixing of religious views with the Super Bowl, it should be pointed out that the only thing new is that it will now appear on the sacred stage of Super Bowl commercials.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale famously said at Super Bowl X: “If Jesus were alive today, he would be at the Super Bowl.” Sites such as ChristiansSportsPlanet.com sell Super Bowl outreach kits so you can have a Christian Super Bowl party in your own home. This year’s 20-minute DVD (ideal for the halftime show) features Chad Pennington and Carson Palmer.

There used to be a Reggie White Christian Super Bowl website that offered pre-game, halftime, and post-game prayer service suggestions. One of his videos was credited with “saving” 30 young people in Melbourne, while a reported 4,200 Reggie White Super Bowl parties led to 2,500 decisions for Christ.

Religious involvement seems to be one of the largest growth areas of the Super Bowl extravaganza. Tim Tebow joins the parade with his “anti-abortion” or “pro-life” message, depending on which side of the issue you find yourself, while CBS strikes a simultaneous blow for free speech and hypocrisy. Tebow is now part of a Super Bowl tradition, and if Reggie White produced all those conversions, the mind boggles at what the Messiah of Gator Nation will beget.

In the end, of course, when all is said and done, much more is said than done, and that is as it should be at the Super Bowl.

In 1925, sportswriter Bill McGeehan called Babe Ruth “Our National Exaggeration.” A better descriptive phrase for the Super Bowl would be hard to find.